


Orange Colored Sky

by flying_siphonophore



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Action/Adventure, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Addiction, Drug-Induced Hallucinations, F/M, Female Reader, Fluff and Smut, Friendship, How Do I Tag, Loneliness, Male Solo, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Not Beta Read, Older Man/Younger Woman, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Reader Is Not The Sole Survivor, Realistic depictions of life in post-nuclear fallout America, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Slow Burn, Smut, Trying something new lol, Voyeurism, aka bringing realism to video game logic, but its true, lol at that last tag, lol where'd that come from?, or we're trying to, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2020-05-30 23:11:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19413379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flying_siphonophore/pseuds/flying_siphonophore
Summary: He's smooth as a sip of whiskey, stunning as an A-bomb going off, and looked like he'd been there the day the world went to shit.Saving the life of the Sole Survivor will undoubtedly get you the kind of attention you hadn't been brave enough to get for yourself, that you had only ever fantasized about--and, of course, pull you into adventuring through the Wastes, a life you had been certain you had left behind.And for what? Friendship? Love? Companionship? Ridding yourself of the existential loneliness that came from a traumatizing lifestyle and lack of human connection in a radioactive wasteland?Fuck. You didn't mean to catch the Mayor's eye, you just wanted to pine for the ghoul from afar and be left alone.Keep tellin' yourself that and maybe it'll be true one day."I was walking along,Minding my business,When out of an Orange Colored Sky,Flash! Bam! Alakazam!Wonderful you came by!"-- Nat King Cole





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (((((when you're bad at summaries, you're b a d)))))
> 
> Yes, you read that right. The reader is NOT the Sole Survivor in this fic! I know the Fallout games are all supposed to be one big self-insert kind of game (or at least that's how I play them because I'm trash lol), but I kind of wanted to try something different, and this is what came to mind.
> 
> I have, like, seven chapters written up? The only issue is I've totally forgotten the course of the game/the main quest, which is kind of important lol. I'll let you know when I hit the wall, and at that point, who knows!
> 
> This is also unbeta'd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 4/16/2020: I'm going through each chapter to edit them individually before I post the next chapter! Sorry for the delay, but the quality of the grammar in this story has really been eatin' at me. As of the date of this note, I've edited this chapter completely!

Its a quiet, dreary evening in Goodneighbor. Rain is pattering symphonically against the sheet metal awnings of the stores, the protective metal wall surrounding the small town, and the small hovels that some people called home.

You're hunkered down behind the counter of Daisy’s Discounts, eyes out of focus and a cigarette burning away between your lips. The harsh lights flickered quickly inside the shop, bringing you out of your daze with a deep sigh that lit the cherry of your smoke. Thunder rolls heavily in the distance.

Plucking the cigarette from between your lips, you put it gently in the ashtray on the counter. Its been a slow night, as usual. A slow day, really. The rain hasn’t let up for the past week, and not many people are willing to travel in this weather. You don’t blame them. Without the right resources, catching a cold outside could easily mean death.

Rubbing the sleep away from your eyes, you sniff and glanc back into the shop towards the stairs. Daisy turned in early, and gave you permission to close in the hour after that if no one showed. With that in mind you rise and stretch, preparing yourself for the boring activity of taking stock before locking up.

You're just turning the outside light off and sliding the metal grating across the front of the shop when the guard stationed by the Goodneighbor entrance shifts. He calls out a greeting to someone beyond the wall. Without any lights inside the shop, he's easier to distinguish beneath his own weak light source in the short distance away through the haze of the falling rain. You take your time palming for the clipboard under the front counter, watching curiously as he moves to open the gate.

Two figures enter, one taller than the other, but both unmistakable. One wears a smattering of armor across his Vault Suit, the bold cobalt and bright gold still eye-catching even in the darkness and despite the grime and damage that's collected on it from exposure. Beside the dweller of 111 is the shorter, but ever familiar form of your Mayor, John Hancock, his hat hiding most of his face and his crimson coat flaring around his boots as he walks.

You sigh dreamily, watching the Mayor and his friend disappear out of view. You raised your cigarette to your lips, looking down at the table you need to fill out on your paper. Ever since you came to Goodneighbor and had briefly met Mayor Hancock, you've been nothing but smitten with him. Your interactions are limited--he really only came by Daisy’s to buy chems or chat with your boss. You're usually working in the back, fixing guns or making chems while Daisy mans the front.

Every time he comes, and you hear his raspy voice and laughter, your heart races and you always take the chance to peek through the dinky curtain separating the back from the front in hopes of getting a good look at him. If he ever catches you looking, he winks or tips his hat to you, grinning through a smokey breath that had you hiding again.

Lately though, Daisy hasn’t been feeling well and relegated her position to you more and more. It has you worried, but she’s assured you quietly that she’s only been feeling nostalgic, and it's nothing for you to be concerned about. It alignes with her behavior. She sometimes leaves for the Memory Den when the sun is setting, leaving the shop to you in the last few hours of opening, trusting you to close up.

“Which is what I should be doing now,” you mutter to yourself quietly, stubbing out your cigarette and rubbing your hands over your face.

Inventory goes by quickly with so little business. You'll probably see Nate within a couple of days if the rain lets up. Your heart quickens at the possibility of the Mayor stopping by as well. He’s yet to come by when you’re the only one here.

You tug your leather jacket on and wrap your scarf around your head in hopes of keeping dry before stuffing your things into your pockets. You nod to a member of the Neighborhood Watch as you lock the padlock on the shop’s gate and hide it behind a drab yellow curtain. Out of the protection of the store, the rain is freezing and the breeze rolling through the narrow streets doesn’t help. You bundle yourself up and walk quickly in the same direction that Hancock and Nate went.

Home isn’t far. It’s just around the corner in the same building that acts as the back wall to Daisy’s and Kill or Be Killed. The bright blue door that is the entrance to the apartment building faces the beginning of the town square, the bright neon lights of the other establishments just visible around the edge of the Old State House.

You quickly step up under the small stone alcove above the door and shake what little water that’s covered you off your jacket, tugging your damp scarf to sit around your neck. The light above the door flickers and hums. Somewhere deep in the ruined city of Boston an explosion goes off, followed by the echo of muffled gunfire. You’re fishing your keys out of your pocket, about to enter the foyer when you see him.

You gulp thickly at the sight of him. He’s taken refuge under his own balcony, the one he uses to address the citizens of Goodneighbor. He’s backlit by the flickering lights of the Third Rail sign, his face hidden in shadow by his hat. A cherry as red and alluring as the lights above him flares with an inhale beneath the brim of his hat. He’s leaning against the wall, head tilted downward with his arms crossed over his chest and his legs crossed at the ankle.

Why he isn’t in the Third Rail, and instead standing outside alone and in the cold, you don’t know.

Your hand is on the cold knob of the apartment’s entrance, but you imagine yourself strolling through the rain, approaching him confidently like you’ve seen him do to others, like you’ve seen others do to him. You imagine what it would be like for him to greet you with a knowing, seductive smirk, what it would feel like if he wrapped an arm around you, if he led you around the corner to the Old State House entrance. What his big hands would feel like against your skin. What his body would feel like against your own.

The door you’re holding onto opens, and you jump and gasp. It opens outward, forcing you to shuffle backwards and out of the way, back into the freezing rain. A woman steps out, with a scarf over her head, like you. She glances at you briefly when you offer a breathy apology before she jogs out into the rain and across the soaked brick walkway. You quickly shuffle back under the awning when she’s out of the way. She’s headed towards the Third Rail, and you can see that Hancock has lifted his head, his jawline now visible in the low light. He’s looking towards your apartment. Toward _you_.

Embarrassed, you quickly swing yourself around the edge of the open door and shut it behind you. The sound of the rain is dampened, and you’re left in an uncomfortably humid hallway and a discomfited feeling under your skin.

Up two flights of stairs and down a hall in the direction you entered from, you come to your small apartment. It’s not much, but its home. Light from Goodneighbor filters in through the window in your small dark living room, right next to your front door, and you peer out of it and back down into the courtyard you had just escaped from.

Mayor Hancock has been joined by someone. They looked like a woman, different from the one that had left your building just before, and a spike of unwanted jealousy shoots through your heart. You should have turned away--shouldn’t have watched--but morbid curiosity, burning like a hot coal in your gut, makes you stare as he curls an arm around her waist, just like you had fantasized about, and leads her around the far corner of the Old State House.

\--

“I’m taking a break. Man the front while I’m gone.”

You look up from the handgun you're cleaning, watching Daisy pull a coat over her suit jacket. She glances at you from the corner of her eye, her sharp cheekbones and jawline apparent under the harsh glare of the light above.

You nod. “Have a good break, Daze,” you say quietly, standing. She nods back, topping her dapper look off with a wide brim hat over her immaculate wig before she steps out into the rain. It’s lessened in the past two days, but it was still a constant.

You move your supplies to the front counter and take a seat on the stool there. Since the rain came in, Goodneighbor and the rest of the ruined city has started smelling cleaner, and you breathed that fresh air in happily. The storm, surprisingly, has yet to escalate into a radiation storm, leaving the water more potable than usual. Sure, the water is still irradiated, but what isn’t? There are plenty of purifiers in town, it just takes some time for the water to get cleaned. This clean storm, though, meant no one has to watch the water fall from the sky and remain thirsty.

Lighting up a cigarette, you turn your gaze downward to the gun. You're exhausted. You hadn’t slept well the night you'd witnessed Mayor Hancock saunter off with whoever that was, and for the past two days that lack of sleep has kicked your ass. It didn’t help that you saw him leave with the vaultie again this morning as you were opening shop with Daisy. It was hard to not look at him, and only Nate sent you a handsome smile as they passed, the mayor too busy trying to light a cigarette in the rain. That had been a few hours ago.

Grumbling, you glance up briefly at the guard that strolls toward the gate, and begin working again. There are rumblings in the distance, the storm raging on harder somewhere else as you methodically clean the gun and piece it back together. Or perhaps it was another explosion of violence from somewhere in the decrepit city.

You berate yourself for your disappointing and pointless infatuation with your mayor. You know deep down that nothing will come of it. You aren’t brave enough to approach him, or interesting enough for him to notice you. You don’t even really know him; your attraction is entirely visceral, though the few times you’ve heard him speak and joke around casually has been quite appealing as well. He's a funny guy, and that's always been an attractive quality to you.

“It’s not worth getting worked up over,” you whisper to yourself, and push it all from your mind. The meticulous and familiar work of repairing and wondering over the gun in your hands absorbs your depressing thoughts, at least for a little while.

You're drawn from your short-lived concentration by shouting from the gate. You glance up, cigarette twitching between your lips, and stare at the guards that are suddenly yanking at the locks on the fence. While lost in thought, you hadn't noticed the gunfire had grown louder, and sounded like it was right on the street outside the settlement. You set the incomplete gun down, straightening up where you sit, wondering with some fear if there are raiders or mutants on the other side of the fence. Judging by the deep, booming barks now echoing through the broken towers of Boston, it's likely the super mutants and their terrifying dogs.

The duo that you had eyed this morning burst through, bloodied and soaked. Nate is being dragged by Hancock, who is missing his hat and has a streak of blood down his face and chest. He dumps Nate down on the ground and kneels, struggling to flip him over before someone from the Watch helps him. Machine gun bursts lit up the air from the other side of the fence, making your ears ring. More members of the Watch flood the Goodeneighbor entrance and funnel outward, bouncing up onto the piles of broken concrete on this side of the fence to aim over it, rhythmic cracks of gunfire snapping off the buildings around you.

You jump up, reaching under the counter for the first aid kit Daisy always kept stocked and the bottle of vodka next to it, quickly sprinting out into the rain to join the small group on the ground. They're yanking off Nate’s armor and tugging his jumpsuit down to reveal the wounds he's sustained. You try to ignore the fact that he's sculpted and filled out in ways that are hard to find in men these days--like he's always eaten well--and quickly kneel by his head and pop the kit open.

You uncork the vodka and drench his wounds. He surprises you when he cries out and then slumps backwards, making you clench your teeth down on your soggy cigarette in empathy. There’s a set of large slashes down his stomach, curling away over his hip, and the muscles spasm as you splash the vodka over them. Large puncture wounds sit across his thigh, the flesh and muscle mangled, and it’s bleeding so bad there’s already a misty red puddle gathering beneath your knees.

“Move,” you order, shouldering a man aside to get at his thigh. You pour the vodka over it on either side, pull out a stimpak and carefully inject the healing solution into and around the wound. You use three on his thigh alone, and another two on his hip and abdomen. You make sure to start from the inside out with the injections, not wanting the skin to heal over damaged muscle underneath. You watch the bleeding stop and begin scabbing rapidly, some healthy pinkish skin and muscles already growing back at the edges before moving on to his stomach wound.

Thankfully it doesn’t seem so deep. It’s bleeding but with the rain it’s hard to tell if there are other fluids escaping him that could be potentially fatal. You dump more vodka onto his rapidly healing wounds to be safe.

A myriad of boots slap the wet ground, coming from deeper inside Goodneighbor. A drenched Doctor Amari kneels down at Nate’s head, her fingers pressing into his pulse.

“We must get him inside and out of the rain.” She stands and motions towards the Old State House. The Watch doesn’t flounder. You move out of the way as they reach under Nate’s arms and legs and lift, marching his deadweight to the House door despite him suddenly coming to again and crying out from the jostling. Amari follows on her heels, barking orders.

“You!” You jump but stand. “Get more stimpaks!” You nod, handing off what’s left of the first aid kit and alcohol to the closest person to you--the Mayor.

He’d gotten his hat back sometime in the thick of it all, and he nods to you, grinning wildly past what’s left of the blood on his face, black eyes wide.

“Thanks, doll. I’m gonna need this.” He chuckles, a tense, rasping sound over the light rain, and takes a long chug of what’s left. You don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or nerves, but you feel hot despite the cold water falling from the sky, and you can still feel the burn of his hot fingers against your hand when he took the bottle from you.

The two of you splinter off from each other. He goes to follow the crowd, and you return to Daisy’s at a brisk pace. You snatch a handful of stims and shove them into a plastic bag. The thought of how much this would cost you briefly passes through your mind, but it isn’t your priority at the moment. You’ve started to shiver, but you chalk it up to the rain, which is getting heavier by the minute. You refuse to think you’re frazzled by what happened, even when you forget to lock up the store halfway across to the House doors and have to turn back to fumble with the padlock.

You’ve only been in the Old State House twice. Once, when you first moved to Goodneighbor and were briefly interviewed by Mayor Hancock and Fahrenheit up in his office, where your stupid infatuation had started. The second time was when Daisy requested you take an order of chems to the Mayor. You hadn’t seen him then, but had waited on the first floor while one of the Neighborhood Watch went to get him. Neither the Watch member or Hancock returned. Instead it was Fahrenheit who had come stomping down the stairs to snatch the box from you before sending you off with the correct amount of caps and some sort of crass remark about you being reduced to an errand girl.

Inside was abuzz with tension. There’s an open door adjacent to you and you enter swiftly. Nate has been splayed out on a table and Dr. Amari’s hands are covered in blood, her focus on his stomach. He looks pallid and his chest his heaving with shallow breaths.

You place the bag between Nate’s legs. The doctor only glances at it and nods, returning to her work. With that, you step back and out of the room, taking a deep breath. You lean your back against the wall by the door, and press your hands to your chest. Your heart feels like it’s trying to rip its way past your sternum.

You had come to Goodneighbor for a sense of security. It was too expensive for you to live in Diamond City, and you had no interest in the Raider lifestyle anymore. It was emotionally taxing if you didn’t drown out your sorrows in drugs, and losing days to a self-destructive haze had become alarming. Not only that, but it hurt to kill people, even if they're also raiders. It was terrifying to face the mutants and their dogs. Feral ghouls are nauseating. The Synths and the Institution are boogeymen around every corner. The Brotherhood are just Raiders with better tech, the Minutemen are laughable, and the Railroad probably doesn’t exist.

Outside is not a place you want to be alone.

Seeing Nate covered in blood had brought back a lot of those memories, and you're doing a piss poor job at calming down. The adrenaline hasn’t left you yet, but without something to do with your hands, without a task to focus on, you're getting restless. You frantically pat your pockets for your cigarettes, but don’t find them on your person.

You manage to strangle a shout when a bottle of vodka taps your bicep. You still jump, twisting around and pressing your back to the corner of the room, staring up with wide eyes into the deep space reflection of Mayor Hancock’s gaze. One brow rises--or, the muscles moves as if it were raising a brow that no longer exists--and his eyelids move in a manner that tell you he’s looked you over critically.

You lean deep into the wall when his hand rises, a light pressure on your teeth popping your jaw open, releasing your mangled, wet cigarette from between them. Blood rushes to your face in embarrassment, and you peer up at Hancock’s amused smile, getting a whiff of something lovely and masculine as he drops his hand. He flicks the cigarette he pulled from your mouth into the trash beside you.

“He’s gonna be ok. He’s been through worse.” He offers the vodka again, his scarred hand holding the entire neck of the bottle and then some. “Drink some of this. It’ll soothe y’nerves.”

You take it with a whispered thanks, wincing with your gulp. It burns through you and helps bring you back to the present. You blink back tears after a second gulp, your racing heart marinating in the whispery chuckle the mayor gives when you finally gasp and lower the bottle.

You glance at him again. He’s lighting two cigarettes in his smirking mouth, the flame of his lighter illuminating his perpetually dark gaze, which is on you.

He leans a shoulder against the wall about a foot away from you--a distance you realize is much smaller than you think--and offers you one of the cigarettes. You take it thankfully and inhale that sweet, hot smoke. You stand quietly with the mayor, smoking and listening to Dr. Amari give orders over the sound of the other din in the room. Hancock doesn’t seem to mind ashing on the floor of his own building, so you do it too.

When you finally finish, the vodka having successfully permeated your blood-brain barrier, you sigh deeply and put the last of the cherry out on the bottom of your boot. You blink away your slight haze, catching Hancock watching you from under his hat.

Clearing your throat, you push off the wall. “Thank you. I, uh…” You rake a hand through your wet hair, glancing past him to the open doorway behind him. “I hope Nate recovers.”

Hancock nods, lips hitching into a smile. His cigarette is still burning, but it’s almost reached the filter. “I should be thanking you,” and he says your name, and it makes your heart jump even though the vodka has you feeling easy and the cigarette light headed. You didn’t even think he remembered your name. He pushes off the wall and plucks the cigarette from his mouth to grin handsomely at you. “So thank you, (Name).”

You swallow thickly and nod, stepping backwards towards the door you had entered from. Hancock tilts his hat to you before looking up from underneath it charmingly, still smiling and relaxed, and you quickly make your exit.

The rain feels heavenly against your warm skin, and you take a deep breath of the cold, damp air. More clouds have stuffed the sky, and it's significantly darker outside even though it couldn’t have been past 3 in the afternoon.

Shuffling down the steps, you quickly walk the short walk back to Daisy’s. There’s two guards at the town entrance, and another two loitering in the small courtyard in front of the shops, indicating that something else had probably happened on the other side while you had been in the Old State House.

Luckily, Daisy hadn’t returned while you had been gone, but you're dreading having to explain to her what happened. Daisy's a hardass when it comes to her things, and you know the money for the stimpaks will come out of your pay.

Banishing the thought of going home quickly just to change, you unlock the grating and slide it back behind the curtain cloistered against the side of the wall, and search for a towel to dry yourself off. You try not to indulge yourself with thoughts of the mayor. He was only being considerate, offering you booze and cigarettes to calm you down because he could tell you were rattled, standing with you as a sign of Goodneighbor solidarity.

You sigh wistfully into your towel, wrapping up your hair and sliding your jacket on to stave off the cold in your damp clothes.

It takes you a few minutes to rouse yourself out of your intrusive thoughts about the mayor’s smile and Nate’s blood, but soon your chilled hands return to the gun you had left in pieces on the counter, and you work as you wait for Daisy to return and chew you out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait on this and on my other stories (if you're reading those). A lot of shit happened suddenly in my life about two weeks ago, and its finally leveling out again.
> 
> I think the conversation with Nate is megh, but whatever.
> 
> Enjoy!

After barking at you for thirty minutes and pulling the caps for the cost of the stims that hadn’t been in the first aid kit--a whopping 300 caps--from your pay, she banished you back to your apartment.

“Before you catch a fucking cold and become absolutely useless!” She glared you out of the shop and you went with your tail tucked between your legs. Her reaction to your good deed, while not surprising, still stung a little.

You had gotten a cold anyway. You were currently sat on your ratty couch in the warmest clothes you owned, wrapped up in your blanket from your bed after a hot bath. The single lamp in the corner of the living room was lit, illuminating the kitchen and living room to the best of its abilities.

Your home isn’t the best, and it’s certainly no Hotel Rexford, but it had taken a lot of work for you to clean out all the rubble and dust that had settled. You had patched parts of the ceiling and walls that had molded out with salvaged wooden planks, cut-out pieces of good drywall you had scavenged from other buildings, along with some dehydrated joint compound that you had discovered in the basement of an old utilities shop a while ago. You had made the space your own over the course of the two years you had been in Goodneighbor, and you were proud of the work you’ve accomplished here to do so. All you needed was some paint to cover the patches up, but that was hard to come by for a reasonable price anywhere near you.

You snuggled down into your musty couch, coming out of the trance that your book had you in as you became more hungry. You glanced at your kitchen, knowing that you were running low on your dry and canned food supplies. You definitely didn’t have any soup for your sore throat, or the purified water you desired. That meant venturing out into the cold rain.

Daisy’s was out of the question. You had shuffled over, sniffling and coughing, looking like a drowned rat when you had arrived for work yesterday morning. Daisy had immediately sent you home with a searing look and a single can of soup, which you had already consumed. You were too embarrassed to go back, and after eating everything that was left in your fridge, the Third Rail was your only other option for sustenance.

Your heart skipped a beat at the possibility of running into the Mayor there, but you definitely didn’t want him to see you like this. You grimaced at the thought, rubbing snot away from your nose with your arm and sniffing hard. Stalling, you tried to get back into your book, but your stomach was rumbling irritably, and soon you were locking your door, bundled up with your leather jacket over your warmer clothes, long pants stuffed into your boots. You wrapped your scarf around your head as you descended, trying to settle your nerves at the possibility of running into the Mayor in your current condition.

The Third Rail was pretty dead, which was to be expected. It was early in the day, and Goodneighbor was a party town that really only woke up in the evening. Even Ham wasn't guarding the inner entrance this early. Charlie was at the bar, as usual, and there seemed to be only one other inhabitant.

You slid in beside MacCready, and he swung his head around at you, mid-sip of a beer. He hums, lips curling into a smile.

“Long time no see, sister,” he murmurs, twisting his bar stool around to face you. “You look like shit.”

“Sup, RJ,” you grumble through a sore throat. Charlie approaches, and before he can rudely ask for your order, you blurt it out quickly. “Just soup, whatever soup you have. Warm, not scalding please.”

Charlie scoffed but floated off without his usual snippy reply, going to prepare your meal.

MacCready chuckled beside you, swirling his spoon in his hydrated mashed potatoes. “How’d you end up like this?” He flicks his spoon at you.

Your voice is muffled by your hands rubbing over your face. “Y’hear ‘bout Nate?”

“Yeah, real bad shape.”

You nod and snort back gunk in your nose. “Got stuck in the rain helping him when they first brought him back and didn’t dry off after.” You shrug, quietly thanking Charlie when he drops a bowl and spoon in front of you. You place your hands around the porcelain and hum happily as the heat of it soaks into your hands. You lean your face over it, feeling the heat rise and warm your nose. You can’t smell it, and you probably won’t be able to taste it, but it’ll warm you right up.

“Better’n sitting by, I guess,” MacCready murmured against the beer bottle he was sipping from, eyes staring unseeingly at the bar in front of him. You fall into a companionable silence.

You wonder how Nate is doing. You don’t know him well, but he would occasionally stop and chat when he was coming or going through the entrance of Goodneighbor. He was charming and handsome in a more innocent way than Hancock, often talking about the past, the time he came from, telling stories about his late wife and missing son. You could tell he was a family man, and he was missing them dearly. If there was anyone that you had so easily been able to read as a good person in this day and age, it was the tall, handsome, dangerously desperate Nate Wilson.

There’s a clicking sound behind you. Someone else had entered the establishment and was messing with the jukebox. _Dear Hearts and Gentle People_ drifted through the speakers, you hum along quietly as you slurp at your soup.

MacCready twisted around fully on his stool, leaning his back against the bar. “Well hey there Mr. Mayor. How’s y’boy Nate holding up?”

You start hacking, having inhaled your soup. MacCready gives you a worried glance, but you wave him off, covering your mouth with your other hand. You tug your handkerchief from your pocket and cough into it, wiping the soup and spit off your face. Charlie floats by with a beer bottle and a bottle of purified water. The water is set before you, and the beer is set before Hancock, who slides onto a stool next to you. You find yourself miserably caged between the two men as they chat.

Hancock taps his hat up with the mouth of his beer bottle, a cigarette pinched between two fingers, and sighs. “S’alright. Dr. Amari said he’d be right as rain once his muscles heal completely.” He takes a pull from his beer, and you finally calmed down enough to lift your head to glance at him. His eyes flick to you once you’ve focused on him, and he gives you a critical onceover. He says your name, and you twitch. “You sick, doll?”

You want to blame your incessant coughing for your lightheadedness, but you know it’s the pet name that’s got you. You simply nod through it, sniffing hard and taking another careful sip of soup.

There’s a pinch of disapproval in the Mayor’s tone. “How the hell d’you get sick after only a few minutes in the rain?” You shrug bashfully, and MacCready laughs from your other side.

“How the hell did you survive outside Goodneighbor?” MacCready asks goodnaturedly, swinging his body back and forth on his stool, one elbow used as an anchor.

After a brief lull of silence, you hear the mayor grunt, and your body tenses up when the back of his hand brushes your bicep for your attention. You blink up at him in surprise, but he doesn’t seem to notice your bewilderment at being touched by him so suddenly and briefly.

“You’ll be happy to know Nate is awake and feelin’ alright. He wants to say thanks some time, when he’s good to walk around again.” Those black eyes examine you closely, and you can feel heat flushing in your cheeks under his gaze.

You sit up a little straighter, not realizing you were hunching under his gaze. It takes a few tries to clear your throat to speak. “Yeah, that...I mean, it isn’t a big deal or anything. He...” You finally trail off, your voice refusing to work right. It didn’t help being so close to Hancock was making your brain stop working.

“Jesus, you sound worse than I do, and my vocal chords are half-rotten,” Hancock grumbles shaking his head before draining the rest of his beer quickly. Placing the bottle on the bar, he stands and straightens out his coat. Suddenly, his hand is resting on your shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. “If y’need anything, lemme know, alright?”

You nod quickly, straightening your posture, and his hand falls from your shoulder as you turn to look at him on your stool. He pulls his hand up quickly when you shift away from him to flick his hat down over his face with a nod before he’s smirking lightly and pulling another cigarette out of his pocket.

“Feel better,” he murmurs, nods to MacCready, and then ambles out of the bar.

Once the tailend of his red coat flaps around the corner, you sag against the bar with an embarrassed groan. You wished there was more soup in your bowl so you could drown yourself in it.

From beside you, MacCready is still facing the empty room, eyes seeming a little distant again. He shakes his head with a small, bemused laugh. “Man, you got it _bad_.”

\--

It takes a few more days for you to recover. During that time, the rain had let up for a bit before it returned with a vengeance. It started pouring, winds started blowing hard, and the sky turned an ominous green and rust that belied a radiation storm in Goodneighbor’s future.

Sniffling, you stepped into work a little late, but for the first time with the energy to actually do something. Daisy gave you a hard once over after you’ve shaken the water off your jacket before nodding and thrusting a box filled with miscellaneous items into your arms.

“Sort ‘em. Salvage what you can. When you’re feeling a little more put together, I need you to go scavenging again.”

You nod, and make your way to the table in the back of the shop. This was your usual M.O. at work, and you were excited to get to stretch your legs outside of Goodneighbor in the future. Sure, it was a little terrifying out there, but at least you had a place to return to should things go sour, and you were never expected to travel very far from the town itself.

It’s livelier than usual, more customers coming through today despite the rain. Rad storms do that to people. The latent atoms quickly decomposing in the air seems to create an energy in the people in the town. Similarly, you’ve always thought that rad storms made the outside world more violent. There’s a burning sensation in the atmosphere that isn’t just the acid in the rain, and it makes people itch to move, to forget that they’re being cooked alive faster than normal when these storms roll through.

“Hey Daisy, (Name) around?” You glance up and see Nate leaning on a crutch, grinning at your boss. She huffs and looks over her shoulder at you.

Nodding her head towards the vaultie, she says, “Take your break. Be back in an hour.”

You nod, grabbing your jacket with shaky fingers. Nate smiles at you from beneath the hood he’s wearing, which isn’t doing much to protect him from getting wet.

You’ve spoken with Nate more than you have Hancock. Probably because you didn’t have a massive crush on him. Besides, to him, it was like his wife died only a month ago, and he had higher priorities than some bedraggled, lonely ex-Raider like yourself. Not to mention that he, like Hancock, was way out of your league, like most of the people you found yourself attracted to. Nate was probably out of most people’s leagues. He was a genuinely good person who had to conform to the corruption to the world around him, but always tried to do the right thing if he could find a way.

“Wanna go to the Third Rail? My treat.” He tilts his head towards the Old State House, and you nod, wrapping your scarf around your head before you stepped out from the protection of the store awning.

It was slow going with Nate’s busted leg, but soon the two of you were soaked and seated at a table in the underground restaurant, sipping on purified waters.

“I heard you were sick after helping me out. I’m sorry to hear that.” He frowns, looking genuinely sorry. It tugs at your heartstrings.

You flapped a hand in front of you, shaking your head. “No, no, no. It wasn’t your fault. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” Your voice is still a little shot, but you give him a quick smile in spite of it.

He smiled softly, leaning back in his seat. “Thank you. I don’t really remember half of what happened, but everyone claims I wouldn’t have been so hot if you hadn’t acted so fast.” He looks around the bar, looking content. “That’s why I like Goodneighbor so much. Everyone here fights for each other, y’know?”

You lean your cheek into your palm, looking down at your bottle of water. “Yeah. It’s paradise in a nightmare, that’s for sure.”

Nate nods, suddenly somber. Quiet falls over the table. You feel like you’ve brought the mood down with your comment, but Nate perks up again, smiling. “Hey, let me go order us some food. What do you want?”

You shake your head and stand. “Nuh-uh. You’re the one who was bleeding out this week. I only had a cold. You tell _me_ what you want, and I’ll go get it. You just hafta pay, alright?”

Nate laughs but agrees, giving you his order. You waltz towards the bar, smiling softly to yourself. You didn’t have many friends in Goodneighbor, even though you had been here for two years. Sure, the citizens would go to bat for each other like it’s nobody’s business, but that didn’t mean that they were very welcoming. You were really only friends with MacCready, who was grumpy half the time and spending time with his kid the rest of it, and you don’t think your boss really counts either. Nate reaching out and making an effort warmed your heart and made you feel good about yourself. You wanted to help him out too, and make an effort to be his friend as well.

Unbidden, as you’re waiting for the food you ordered at the counter, John Hancock comes to mind. You bite your lip, swirling your finger in a circle of water left behind by a perspiring cup. He had talked with you more times this week than he ever has in the entire time you’ve been here. Was he doing the same thing Nate was, or was he just looking out for one of his citizens? The mayor was incredibly protective of his people, so he probably only felt obligated to check on you, right?

You thank Charlie when he returns with the food for you. Nate smiles at your return, and you smile back, sliding into your seat.

As the two of you dig in, Nate naturally starts up conversation again. “So, I heard you’re pretty new in town compared to some. How long have you been here?”

“Two years or so. I’ve known MacCready since he was a kid, out in the Capital Wasteland. I ran into him out in the Wastes while I was a Raider.” Nate’s brows shot up at that tidbit of knowledge, and you laugh a little and shrug, choosing no to delve into that history. Instead, you pretend he’s surprised you traveled so far East. “New Vegas kind of imploded a couple years back. It didn’t make for a great living environment. I had no real reason to stay, so I came back home.”

Nate nods, and there’s a brief lull as the two of you mull over your separate thoughts. You realize he probably has no idea what you’re talking about, and it makes you smirk a little as you push your food around on your plate.

“I definitely wouldn’t have ever pegged you for the Raider type,” Nate says suddenly, narrowing his eyes at you curiously.

You shrug and deflect. “You’d be surprised how many people feel like they have to live like that. They grew up that way, can’t afford to live in a town like this, or they feel like they can’t survive alone. S’how I was before I got in a fistfight with MacCready. Before I realized it was MacCready.” You clarify with a snort, and Nate laughs. In reality, your encounter with RJ had been incredibly terrifying. If you hadn’t recognized him at first--having left Little Lamplight before he had grown into the man he is now--one or both of you could easily have died that night. Just thinking about it shoots a thrill of adrenaline to your fingers, and you shift around restless in your seat, trying to find a comfortable position again.

“So MacCready got you into Goodneighbor?”

You nod again. “And I was lucky enough to convince Daisy that I would be a good employee. Her age is catching up to her, and scavenging is getting more dangerous for her. While she does get some things from people in or out of town that have scavenged on their own, I doubt I’d have gotten a job that didn’t exist before me if I wasn’t doing something right.”

Nate grins and crosses his arms. “Damn, that’s pretty impressive. I’m glad I decided to give you a thank you meal. Don’t think I would have learned about any of your adventurous past if I hadn’t asked.”

You didn’t bother correcting him. While you had been all over the Boston Wastes, and traveled to and from New Vegas just to end up here, that wasn’t necessarily because you were curious about any of it. You did what you had to do, but you preferred the safety of Goodneighbor now, the comfort of your small apartment and the protection that it offered.

“Maybe you should join me some time when I’m travelling.”

Blinking back to the present, your wide eyes met warm brown. He was smiling pleasantly, idly tapping his fork against his cleared plate.

“O-Oh, um--” You had no idea what to say. You wanted to immediately say no, but some small part of you thought about how utterly bored you were here. Yes, you loved Goodneighbor, but your routine was the same pretty much everyday. You held your own easily outside of the Goodneighbor wall, but you found your fear to be somewhat reasonable despite your boredom. You were bored but at least you were safe.

A certain smirking Ghoul in a red frock and tricorn hat flashed through your mind, and pretty quickly you’re falling down a rabbit hole of potential storylines for fulfilling your stupid crush.

What an idiotic reason to say yes to such a dangerous job.

Nate laughed and raised a hand. “Hey, don’t freak out. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, so you’ve got some time to think about it. But I think it’d be fun!”

Your brows creased above your nose. How the hell could anyone think the Wastes were fun? He was being much too cavalier about the Wastes than you were comfortable with, but then again he hasn’t been particularly shy about the fact that he basically stepped out of the past and into the future only a few short months ago.

With your plate empty, and the clock on the wall indicating you had about ten minutes left of your break, you awkwardly placed your hands flat on the linoleum table top and slowly stood as you spoke. “Well, uh. Thank you for the meal, Nate. I appreciate it.”

He laughed. “Hey, thanks for saving my life!”

Air escapes between your lips. “Please, that was all Dr. Amari.”

Nate shrugs, grinning humorously. “It was a team effort, I hear.”

That has you laughing, and you pull your leather jacket and scarf on. Nate stands as well, wobbling a little as he tucks his crutch under his arm.

“I’ll see you later, (Name).” He waves and limps around you, deeper into the bar. You nod back. You made it to the door when you glance back on a whim, just to make sure Nate’s ok. He’s limping towards the shadowed back of the bar, and you clutch at your scarf tightly when you see two gleaming black eyes peering back at you from the low light of the VIP seating area.

Mayor John Hancock was lounging with an arm tucked along the back of the fancy couch, an ankle resting on his knee and a glass of whiskey balanced precariously upon his bent leg. His head twitches upwards a little, acknowledging that he got caught staring, and you can see his teeth as his lips pull into a grin before his head swings around towards Nate, greeting him.

You rush back up the stairs and into the itchy breeze of the radiation storm. It’s only gotten worse. You cover your face up to your eyes and jog back to Daisy’s in the sparse but torrential rain and try to calm your racing heart.

“Something on the table for you,” Daisy grunts as you jump into the shop, quickly unveiling yourself and drying off with a proffered towel. You frown at her and she shrugs, a mild smirk dancing on her thinned lips.

There’s a pouch full of caps. A note was folded and stuffed inside with them, the chicken-scratch message making your cheeks flare hot.

_For the stims._

_\-- Hancock_

\--

Mayor John Hancock had been aware of you for a while. He wouldn’t be a good mayor if he didn’t know every single person that lived in Goodneighbor.

That doesn’t mean he knows everyone personally, he just knows of everyone. He only vaguely remembered meeting you when MacCready first brought you to town. He mostly remembered the fact that your ass almost gave him a heart attack in the tight leather pants you had been wearing as you were leaving his office--which you still wore on occasion, the few times he saw you--but other than that he had been too high to pay too much attention to the answers you were giving his general admission questions, which he also didn’t really remember.

What he mostly noticed about you since your established presence was your skittishness. Especially around him. He’d been pretty positive it was because he’s a ghoul, but without actual proof he hadn’t been sure. That theory had been shot when you’d started working for Daisy. The times he’d gone to visit, you could barely look at him, but you obviously respected your boss deeply, and Daisy never had a single bad thing to say about you.

Well, except one thing…

“She’s too damn quiet,” Daisy grumbled, leaning against her countertop and looking over her shoulder at her only employee, the only employee she’s ever had since John had known her. Hancock tilted his head to look past her. You had your back to them, their voices likely drowned out by the music crooning through a stereo on the table beside you as you cleaned and pieced together what looked like an old Chinese semi-automatic rifle. Daisy had told him with pride that you’d scavenged the smaller pieces individually, a very impressive feat.

John grunted around his cigarette, indicating he was listening. He watched you dip your wrist beneath your hair and pull it over one shoulder, revealing the long line of your neck and the shorter hairs curling around your ear and nape.

“Been scaring the shit outta me left and right. I’m not used to having anyone else around,” Daisy twisted to face John again, her usual frown on her face. He blinked back at her. “But that makes her good at her job, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.”

So he changed his theory. You were just shy. But that didn’t make sense either. You interacted fine with everyone else you came across, if you weren’t a bit of a loner. MacCready, for all his bitchiness, laughed more when you were around than he did with anyone else. John glanced over at the young merc, who had his hat pulled down over his eyes and a beer cradled in his lap, feet kicked up on the nice table they were sharing at the back of the Third Rail. Now that he thought about it, MacCready may not be a good measure of your social skills since the two of you have known each other for well over a decade, and MacCready was at best described as a grump with a too-happy trigger finger.

You and Nate seemed to click naturally, but Nate was like that with everyone if they were at least a semi-decent person.

And Daisy was your boss. There seemed to be a more maternal or mentor-mentee relationship there than a friendship.

John couldn’t recall if he had ever seen you willingly interact with anyone outside of those three.

The mayor watched you flee from him once more, flying up the stairs of the Third Rail and disappearing from sight after he had flashed a smile your way.

“Did you know she used to be a Raider?” Nate’s bemused comment sliced through Hancock’s thoughts like a Deathclaw slices through a Brahmin.

Hancock’s eyes jumped up to his friend, and he tilted his head back. “Uh...excuse me?”

Nate said your name, shuffling himself around to sit on the opposite end of the couch from John. “Yeah. Said she ran with Raiders before she came here.”

John blinked rapidly at the vaultie, who gave a confused smile back. From the corner of his eye, Hancock saw MacCready raise his head and flick his hat up. He had a frown on his face, giving Hancock a critical look.

“You should know that,” the sniper said flatly. “That’s the whole reason that you insisted on interviewing her when I brought ‘er here.”

Hancock tongued his cheek and glanced between the men staring at him. He puts his hand out, as if to placate them. “I mean… _Listen_ , I was _really fucked up_ when that whole interview thing happened. I am for most of ‘em.” MacCready scoffed, slouching further in his seat while Nate laughed. “I’d been on a bender for fuckin’ days, man.”

The young sniper tugged his hat down over his eyes again and crossed his arms tight over his chest, beer bottle buried into the crook of his arm. “How the hell’d an addict become a fuckin’ mayor, geez…”

John just gave a good-natured laugh, turning his attention back to Nate. “How’d it go?” He jerked his head towards the table he had been sitting at with you. He was still kind of reeling from this new information about you, even though it was definitely something he should have remembered being told.

Nate nodded. “Good! She’s sweet. I offered her the chance to do some travelling with me some time.”

Hancock nodded, letting Nate ramble. Sipping his beer, he tried to imagine you in Raider gear. Strapped in spiked armor, fabricated metal chest pieces and a caged-in face, weilding a baseball bat or some kind of Frankensteined gun that those savages were known for. He wondered if you’d ever partaken heavily in the Psycho that was so prevalent among them, or if you perhaps preferred the crawling hyper-focused haze of Jet, another Raider favorite that he shared. He wondered if you liked getting high at all. The thought titillated him, endearing him to the thought of you rolling and messy on Psycho, or relaxed and lethargic on Jet.

Just thinking about it was giving him the itch, and he shuffled around the inner breast pocket of his frock, withdrawing a little red inhaler. He took a deep inhale, his breath misting out before him as he eased deeper into the couch cushion. The lights around him became a little more focused, his vision felt sharper, but everything slowed down, just the way he liked it. He blinked around hazily. MacCready was still removed from the conversation, but Nate was watching him.

John held out the inhaler. “Want some?” Nate shook his head, and Hancock let his hand fall to his lap.

With his lips feeling looser, John mumbled. “S’hard to imagine her as a Raider.”

Nate hummed, aiding himself in getting his bum leg up onto the coffee table. “I was definitely surprised.” Nate’s voice sounded just a tad deeper, as did most people’s when Hancock was on Jet.

“I mean.” Hancock frowned at the ceiling, feeling his hat knock off his head as he tilted it back. It fell to the seat beside him. “She’s so _shy_. And skittish. Y’gotta do some fucked up shit t’survive bein’ a Raider. Can’t hesitate.” He scratched an itch on his thigh, feeling the calloused lacerated skin beneath his pants. He snorted a little. “That’s the craziest shit I’ve heard all week.”

“Yeah, she said something like that, too.”

John patted around his body for his cigarettes, and fumbled to light one. The hot smoke felt good in his lungs, which felt as if they had been cooled by the pressurized Jet compound.

“You know anything about it MacCready?” Nate turned his gaze onto the younger man.

He doesn’t answer immediately. “It’s not my place to say,” he grunts after a moment. Nate nods, sharing a look with Hancock who shrugs, inhaling deeply on his cigarette again, letting his eyes fall shut as he enjoyed his high.

As the group of men fell silent, Hancock mirroring MacCready’s positioning in the couch, the mayor thought that he’d like to see you relax for once in your damn life. It sounded like you needed it, and bad.

MacCready left first, muttering something about his kid , and then Nate, and soon Hancock was left to lounge alone in the back of the Third Rail. He decided to spend the rest of his evening there, huffing on Jet and cigarettes, drinking shitty whiskey and wondering about the kind of whiskey that Nate reminisced about from the past and if it was really any different than whiskey now. He watched people drift in and out of the bar, a few coming to chat but otherwise leaving him be. He wondered if Daisy had given you those caps he’d dropped off around noon, just after you’d left with Nate. He would’ve brought them here with him to give them in person if you weren’t so spooked every time you knew he was around.

Magnolia had been on for about an hour or so when he finally peeled himself off the couch to make his way to the surface. A working girl he’s paid a few times made eyes at him but he only tipped his hat with a smile, too tired to put any effort into seeking physical pleasures beyond the drugs he already had in his rooms.

It was pouring, and the radiation felt like a summer’s breeze on his wrecked flesh. He inhaled deeply, shutting his eyes and falling back against the damp brick under the Third Rail awning. The radiation was clearing his head, and he decided to smoke one more cigarette before getting fucking drenched.

He spaced out again, watching the way the lights around him bounced off the falling rain until movement in his peripheral caught his notice. He turned his head, and through the static of the rain was able to just make you out in the dark. He recognized the bluish color of the scarf over your head, reflecting the weak light of the bulb hanging above you. You were standing at the entrance of the apartment complex that acted as a containment wall for Goodneighbor, but John couldn’t tell if you were going in or coming out.

Again, he wants to know if you had gotten his gift.

He decided not to stare or call out, closing heavy eyes and focusing on finishing his cigarette. Wet footsteps interrupted him, and when his eyes cracked open, you were shaking yourself off under the awning, back pressed against the opposite wall.

Unlike him, you were soaked. It wasn’t that far of a walk from Daisy’s to your apartment to the Third Rail entrance, but you looked like you had taken a dip in the ocean.

You kept glancing at him nervously, your eyes returning to the acid rain that was forever eating away at the concrete around you.

“Got somethin’ on yer mind, sweetheart?” Hancock’s cigarette bobbed with his words, and from under the shadow of his tricorn he watched you gulp and look away. You bashfully held your scarf closer to your face, and John had the hardest time imagining you as a ruthless scavenger in the Wastes, murdering and getting high to pass the time.

You pushed off of the wall and stepped towards him, digging around in your jacket pocket. “Here. Thank you, but I don’t need to be repaid for helping someone who needed it.” In your hand is the pouch of caps he’d left for you, and John huffed out a cloud of smoke.

He shook his head, also standing straight. “Mm-mm, stimpaks are expensive. You’re keepin’ ‘em.” He flicks his hat up to stare down at your frown.

Your wet eyelashes flutter in surprise, the neon lights glittered on the small droplets caught in them. It reminded him of some of the women he’d see in old erotic magazines that had survived from before the War, when they wore fake lashes with jewels on them. “N-No, I...Mayor Hancock, please, I knew what the consequences were when I took them from Daisy, this isn’t necessary.” You push your hand out further.

John reaches up and cradles the back of your hand in one of his, wrapping his fingers gently around your wrist before you can jerk away in surprise. His other comes up to fold your cold, stiff fingers over the pouch. He steps towards you, holding you in place. His head angles downward, and he suddenly realizes that he hadn’t ever noticed that you were so short.

He can feel your heartbeat fluttering under his thumb, and in turn it makes his pulse jump in empathy. He tilts his head back and stares down at you past the hot stream of smoke escaping his cigarette, brow muscles bouncing upwards.

His vision is still sharp as ever from the Jet, and under the bright neon red light of the Third Rail sign, you look mortified. Your eyes are wide and your shoulders are bunched up and tense. You had pulled against his grip, but stopped once there was a pressure between your hand and his. His grip wasn’t so strong that you couldn’t pull out of it with a firm tug, but you seemed frozen in place.

All signs that you definitely don’t want him touching you.

His brain is going a little slower, and it takes him a second to realize his faux pas. He clears his throat in shaky, smoky puffs and eases his grip from your hand to keep you from falling backwards. You don’t yank yourself away from him like he expects you to. Instead, you relax and slowly let your hand fall from his, still gripping the sack of caps. You blink at him, and there’s a second of hesitation before all physical contact is lost.

John feels awkward. Embarrassed that he had grabbed you so thoughtlessly. He shoves his hands into his pockets and steps backwards. With a silent nod, his hat jerking down over his eyes, he slips into the rain and slinks around the corner, his cigarette nearly going out.

Dried and lying in bed, cocooned by a blanket low at his hips and the burgeoning tingle of a plateaued high, John can’t quite get you out of his head for the rest of his night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: Matthew Mercer voices MacCready! No wonder I like him so much!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've had this done for a while, but life gets in the way sometimes, and it saps a lot of creative energy out of me when it does. I was also concerned it would be boring? Or bad? IDK. I decided to post it anyway after some light editing, because I think its still important for the way the characters will grow and for some background on the reader character.
> 
> Anyway. Apologies for how long this took to get out, but its here now! And I won't be promising any sort of schedule like I did before lol, because that's just too much stress on me at this point in my life. And that goes for all of my stories from here on out! I learned my lesson!
> 
> Hope you enjoy this <3

The day after your encounter with Mayor Hancock outside the Third Rail is the day you leave to scavenge. You leave early enough that there’s sunlight, but late enough that the raiders that have probably been high all night have finally crashed, and that the ones who were meant to take next watch were likely still unconscious from their overuse the night before.

For once you’re actually glad to be out of Goodneighbor. Your mind was racing, and moving felt good as you considered last night. Being confined to Daisy’s shop would have made you go stir crazy, something you didn’t feel too often anymore. You could feel the confusing emotions bubbling up under your skin and in your belly, and you desperately tried to not let that distract you. You wring one hand over the other where Hancock had held you the night before, as if you could get rid of the feeling.

Distraction out in the Wastes meant death.

Buildings you had previously ransacked had been marked with bright yellow spray paint, and you cycled through signs to inform yourself of what you left behind. You imagined your paths as a simplistic flower, each petal curving out from Goodneighbor and then curling back in on itself, each petal slowly overlapping as you made your rounds. You usually go in the opposite direction of the way you went on your last trip, and that didn’t change this time. Last time you had gone South West, so you would head North East this time around.

Carefully and quietly you made you way past tall buildings that you had already marked and further beyond. You steer away from sounds or at the first signs of the foul bags of meat supermutants like to mark their territories with, and the mini shanty towns amongst the ruins of fallen skyscrapers ruled by strung out raiders that always reminded you of the past. They never seemed to stop popping up, or being occupied. Raiders especially were like rats, multiplying rapidly and filling in one lost raider with another two. You’d seen plenty of that in your day; comrades dying, only for their spot to be filled the next morning by someone just as violent and reckless who’d probably be dead within the next three days.

Even though you didn’t particularly like being outside of the walls of Goodneighbor and in the rusting city, you had to admit that it felt safer than being in the Mojave. Strong winds could blow down unprepared encampments, wild and ferocious animals the likes of which you’d never seen before in your life could tear their way through a camp. Being in the desert with no protections at all was like always having a bullet in your back. Just the thought of it makes the back of your neck itch, and you glance behind you timidly, pausing to listen intently.

The worst part about the Mojave wasn’t the daytime heat or the nighttime chill, it wasn’t the terrifying animals, and it wasn’t even the war. It was the nothingness. A great red expanse of nothing but sand and silence was torture. New Vegas and its surrounding territories hadn’t been built around the protection of community and the weak. It was built around money and technological power, about keeping the weak out and protect those who were already strong, no matter what the NCR proclaimed their true mission was. You watched absolutely desperate people try to make their way into the inner sanctum of New Vegas just to be out of the unforgiving desert, only to be riddled with holes or shanked in an alleyway, their bodies left to be scavenged and rot by people who were going hungry and being burned alive by the radiation and the sun.

Not that raiders had built themselves around community, but at least if you proved your worth in any other way that didn’t have to do with money you were afforded a certain amount of group shielding. It was a farce, but it wasn’t nothing when everyone else was so untrustworthy and spread out. The distance between settlements didn’t allow for a sense of togetherness, what you had ultimately always been seeking and what you’d lost when you foolishly had left Little Lamplight on a whim.

But here in Boston, where the city itself prevents the kind of sprawl only possible in the desert, people have to group together and support one another. Being isolated in the city is just as dangerous as in the desert, but often enough you won’t see an enemy coming. The once urban environment lent itself well to an idea of togetherness that comforted you to your core, that meant you always had a home to go back to, that reminded you of the whimsical and almost childish promises made back in Little Lamplight when you had been so young. And people followed through on that protection. Or at least they did in Goodneighbor.

Jimmying open unmarked buildings was always frightening, as they could be inhabited, or rigged to explode. You had an ugly scar running up your right leg to your hip from the time a bottle cap mine had been set off when you had pushed open the door of an occupied apartment in an otherwise empty building. Thankfully the door took most of the explosion, and even better was the fact that the idiot who had rigged it had thought it would be a good idea to stand next to it to attack you when they realized they were about to be burgled. They had bled out as you limped around the space, taking what little they had to save yourself and hightail it.

You came upon a row of townhomes along a square in what was once inner city Boston. A number of them you had looted in the past, but there were still a few left you hadn’t been inside. Picking one, you did your best to listen at the door, the only sound behind you being the wind whistling through the empty city. When you heard nothing but the creak of the house, you tried the door, finding it unlocked and unblocked, and oh so slowly inched it open, eyes on the floor for any sign of a wire. With a gap wide enough for you to slide through, you did just that, silently closing the door after yourself.

You held your breath, letting your eyes adjust to the dusty darkness, and listened.

The building creaked with the wet wind outside. The rad storm had calmed but there was still a light mist falling from the sky. A fog had rolled in from the bay, giving you and anyone else venturing through town a little more cover from any watchful eyes. It made the inside of the house significantly darker than it usually would be at this time of day.

It didn’t _sound_ like there was anything inside with you, but feral ghouls were known to stand in place for days without moving or making a noise. Licking dry lips behind the bandana you had tied around the bottom half of your face, you crouched slowly and picked up a brick from the destroyed wall next to you and tossed it deep into the dark hallway before you. It clattered, dust and debris rising up in a sandy huff of air, and smaller stones slid across the wood floor before everything settled again.

You waited, barely breathing, listening hard. You waited, and waited.

Nothing.

Your chest hurt with your controlled, quiet breaths, and you pressed on. You flicked on the flashlight necklace that hung around your neck, and the room was suddenly sparsely illuminated.

The hulking mass of the rotting staircase before you led upwards along your right and twisted left into a landing, and there was a doorway before you and an archway to your left. You moved through, intending to circle back around to test out the stairs.

You were in a living room. The room held furniture that was once obviously expensive. You gently ran a finger along what was left of the silk upholstery and tried to imagine what kind of family lived here, in this kind of secured comfort. Under the large boarded up bay window to your left was a long set of shelves, crowded with mostly rotting books and papers. You found a toy car and a brass statue, and slipped both into your bag. You quietly popped open the panel of the built in record player, fishing around for any components that you recognized that seemed to still be working. You did the same to the TV in the corner of the room. You wrapped the TV’s lightbulb up in cloth and slid it into one of the many small boxes you had folded away just for this purpose.

The kitchen was next. There was a small dining nook, windows not boarded up as neatly. You tried to peak out through the gaps, but the glass was too filthy to see much beyond the faint light that shines down from above. Here you took plates and silverware, knowing that the Rexford and the Third Rail would pay pretty for both. There were still some nice glasses in good condition, too, and you snagged those, stuffing and wrapping them with old rags as well.

There was no edible food, empty cans left behind not worth anything to you, and the refrigerator had nothing in it either. You swiped some chemicals from beneath the sink, consolidating them in smaller, labeled bottles that fit better into your bag. Jugs filled halfway or more were tied to the back of your pack and belt. Piping was already missing. Copper was hard to find, and expensive, just like it was two hundred years ago.

There were some closets under the stairs that held some linens and rotting jackets and coats. You shook out all the linens and took any that weren’t completely moth eaten.

Your bag was starting to get full, and you decided to venture upstairs. You went slow, trying to align the squeaks of the stairs with that of the house. There wasn’t anyone downstairs, sure, but upstairs could be an entirely different story.

The first room was a bedroom, possibly a child’s. There were faded posters on the wall, and the rotting bed was covered in sheets that had depictions of planets on them. You found a couple more toys and, to your pleasant surprise, a comic book in seemingly readable condition. It was inside a plastic protective slip, and you rolled it up gently and put it in the inner breast pocket of your jacket. All the clothes and shoes were gone.

The next room was a bathroom, and you were surprised to find gauze still inside the mirror medicine cabinet. It could be boiled and bleached for use later. Copper piping remained here as well, which you took with a feeling of unease settling in your stomach. You took some of the piping from the sink, shower and toilet, nearly gagging when some unknown sludge spurted out and poured down the chipped, stained tile upon removal. The smell was horrendous.

The room at the end of the upstairs hallway had light filtering in under the door that appeared natural. That meant the windows hadn’t been boarded up, or the boards had been taken down. You slowly set your bag down and moved silently to your knees, pressing your cheek to the disgusting and stiffened carpet, looking underneath the crack. A warm, wet breeze fluttered over your face, forcing you to blink.

Your throat went tight and your face felt cool as the blood drained from it even though your heart was pounding against the floor beneath you. There was a body; shriveled, still, and curled up on the floor. The gown it wore had been stained dark where it lay between it and the ground, before fading with time. It was the body of someone who had been dead for a long time, though not so long that it had lost all of its flesh. Whether it was still alive or not was another question.

You debated entering. You hadn’t heard anything moving earlier, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a possible feral ghoul inside. The fact that the upstairs hadn’t been looted was suspicious enough as it was. And even if there wasn’t a ghoul, you would have to step around the long dead body of someone who had laid on the floor and died seemingly alone, and that made you somewhat nauseous. If you hadn’t had the choice, you probably would have entered.

You weren’t required to bring back anything amazing, or have any kind of quota to fill unless Daisy was desperate. With that in mind, you slowly pushed yourself up, gathered your things, and exited the building quietly. Next to the front door knob, you spray painted a yellow stick figure in a triangle dress.

The next few buildings hadn’t gained you as much as the first did, and you decided to call it a day when you opened a door and saw the red light of a mine flashing back at you in the dark hallway of an old office building.

Hauling your load back was the most dangerous part. Now that it was closer to or afternoon, and the rain seemed to be letting up some, the mutants and raiders were going to start shaking off their drowsiness and begin patrolling. You were also moving slower, weighed down by your haul and by your rising stress. You kept one hand wrapped tight in the cross made by the bag straps across your body, and the other gripped your well-oiled handgun at your side, drawn and safety released with the expectation of an attack.

It was a tense hour walking back to town. Explosions and screams in the distance startled you halfway there, and follows you the rest of the way home. You breathe a sigh of relief when you round a familiar corner and see the Watch member stationed outside the small Goodneighbor gate. You tugged your bandana down, and the older man nodded, shifting on his stool and repositioning the AR held firmly in his grasp. You were shivering despite your leather jacket and pants, ready to drop your haul off with Daisy and warm up.

As usual, she was leaning against the countertop, cigarette dangling from her mouth. She straightened upon seeing you, and was offering you a cigarette before you could even ask for one.

“Come on in and lay it out,” she said after she lit your cigarette for you. With a grunt, you pulled the bag up onto the table in the back of the shop, and she grabbed for it, helping you drag it into the center. You dropped into a seat and leaned your head back, closing your eyes to enjoy your cigarette and the decompression of your spine as she looked.

Your cigarette was half-spent by the time she was nudging your foot with hers. You didn’t remember dozing off. “This is decent. I’ll get your pay and then you’re free to go.” It took a few blinks for your vision to not be muddled by your drowsiness, lifting your head slowly.

Stubbing your cigarette out, you nodded to Daisy when she returned to you with a pouch of caps. You stood and stretched, relishing the thought of the rest of the day to yourself. Your pace was slower and you didn’t mind the rain so much, knowing the cover you sought was safe.

You were starting to feel the ache in your knees from all the walking and climbing you did today, the pinch in your shoulders from carrying an overstuffed bag around on your back. All you wanted was to crawl into your bed and warm up under the covers.

Ascending into the dry and cool apartment that was yours, you locked every lock on the door and started stripping. You had built a bedframe for yourself in the other room and made the mattress by hand, and you collapsed upon it happily once completely nude, wrapping yourself up in your comforter and quilt combo.

An arm slung over the edge of the bed, and bent down to flick at a box hidden away in the shadows under the frame. Your finger caught the edge of the lid, and you dragged it out and up onto the mattress next to you.

With a sniff, you popped the metal box open and tilted it towards you, revealing the collection of chems you kept inside of it for occasions when you felt you really deserved to let go for a few hours. You fished out your berry Mentats and, feeling a little needy, popped two. The chalky tabs cracked under the pressure of your teeth, and you curled away from the box, leaving it open for use at your back.

You settled in for a relaxing rest of your day, dragging your book off the nightstand and flipping it open.

You blink, and the day is darker, perhaps the late afternoon. You frown and fumble for the nuclear clock on your bedside table, squinting at it. Your stomach rumbles and you huff. The desire to stay in bed despite your need to eat was hefty. Glancing over your shoulder, you contemplated doing something to ease the cramps in your belly a little longer, but decide against it.

Pushing up and out of bed, you drag your quilt with you into the kitchenette and pop open your fridge. There’s Brahmin meat wrapped in paper that you only vaguely remember Daisy pushing into your hands on your way out of the shop earlier, and you whisper a quiet thanks to her as you take a slab and pop it in a bowl. You had an old bottle of wine MacCready had given you for your birthday earlier this year, and you poured some over the steak along with some other dried herbs and scavenged spices you’d stowed away for yourself to let it marinate in the fridge.

There had been an electric stove in the apartment when you had first started renting it from the mayor, but it hadn’t worked and you didn’t know how to fix it. Ripping it out, you had sold most of the usable components to Daisy, and had replaced it instead with a rigged unit that you built yourself from a propane tank, a wire cage made to support vine plants, a small square of mesh that had perhaps once been a drainage grate of some kind over the top of it, and a circular burner from the broken gas stove connected by a rubber tube to the propane tank. It fit into the large cubed slot that the stove had originally sat between your counters.

Turning the gas on and the release knob, you used a lighter to start the fire at the burner. Letting the grating heat up, you moved to turn on the lamp by your couch and the radio next to it.

Travis Miles stuttered something unintelligible across the air, making you snort as you waved your hand over the grating before the prancing piano of _Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall_ began fading into your small apartment. Fitting, given the weather and your current feelings for a certain ghoul in town.

Say what you will about Travis Miles’ terrible radio personality, the guy knew how to pick his tunes.

You sniffed, laying the Brahmin steak across the grating. It sizzled and popped, and you stepped backwards. Your body rocked with the music, and you sang quietly with Ella. “ _But when I think of you, another shower starts. Into each life some rain must fall, but too much is falling in mine_.”

You flexed your left hand around the grip of your quilt, remembering Hancock’s touch on your skin. You’ve been hyper aware of your hand since it happened. He had felt incredibly warm, even for the muggy rad storm the two of you had been near-standing in. His hands were rough, textured and dry, probably from the heavy scarring from losing most of his surface flesh during his ghoulification. You thought of the moisturizing salve you had in your small bathroom, and wondered if he would want any. It was easy to make when you have the right materials, which you stored in the bottom drawer of your fridge. Perhaps you could give him some as a thank you for the caps…?

You quickly banish that thought, stepping forward to flip the steak with your tongs. He had been insistent that the caps were a thank you for the stims. But does that mean you couldn’t thank him for his thank you? Even though you had tried to give them back, it did help to not lose out on nearly 700 caps. You got paid depending on how much work came in to the shop, and the only flat rate Daisy had been willing to give you for your scavenging, which you didn’t do often enough to support yourself.

“Just leave it,” you whispered to yourself, flipping the steak over again. You reached for a knife and sliced into it, trying to determine if it was cooked. Leaving it to cook longer, you moved to the window to open it and release the heat that was building up inside your small home. You kept the curtains over the window, turning to sit on the sill and dropping your quilt around your hips, exposing your nude upper half to your living room. The damp air from the heavy rain outside felt good on your skin. It seemed as if the rad storm had passed, bringing in another sweeping of non-acidic rain and a cold front.

You sit on your couch with your steak and what’s left of that bottle of wine, and eat alone. You let yourself wonder if you had enough ingredients to make another jar of your moisturizer.

For yourself, of course.

\--

Daisy always gave you a full day or two off after you went on scavenging trips. She liked to take that time to appraise the items that you brought in before she requested that you do anything with them, and she liked to do it alone.

This didn’t bother you. Scavenging was stressful and she knew that. Having another few days to lounge around in bed all you wanted, or to go late to the Third Rail and drink without worrying about work the next day, was nice after you had been so tense.

You popped another berry Mentat before you stepped out of your apartment building, strolling in the dark towards the Third Rail. It was later in the evening, you had digested your Brahmin steak, and you had put on some nicer clothes under your usual leather jacket. You had put on your moisturizer, and slipped it into your jacket pocket with the excuse that you could need some later.

Usually you wouldn’t even think to go to the Third Rail during their busiest times, preferring the quiet solitude of its minute daytime crowd when you needed to eat out or get some minor personal interaction. The Mentats probably had something to do with your eased stress about being in such a crowded space. You just hoped MacCready was there tonight. Hell, even Nate would be good to see, though he’d probably be hounded by people curious to talk to him.

The thought of sitting and drinking casually with Mayor John Hancock made you sweat even in the pouring cold rain outside.

You lit a cigarette with shaky fingers as you skipped down the steps, glancing timidly towards Ham. He grinned at you, looking slick as usual in his impeccably clean suit.

“Well look who it is!” He didn’t sound sarcastic, and you tried to give him a smile back. “Long time no see, Miss (Name). I’m glad to see you coming by to enjoy the Third Rail at its best.”

“Thanks, Ham,” you say, voice quieter than you had wanted it to be. He seemed to hear you anyway and gestured for you to enter with a smile you returned stiffly.

It’s hot inside, packed full with people you recognized from the neighborhood. _Mighty, Mighty Man_ was blasting through the jukebox, and you took a deep breath through your cigarette as you slipped through the crowd. There were couples dancing on the floor, swinging around and laughing. There was a group of rowdy men yelling and drinking heavily at one table, and another group of women adjacent to them. Some of them were sharing looks and you quickly looked away.

You felt relief at the sight of MacCready’s hunched form over the bar, and you draped an arm over his back and leaned in next to him.

“RJ!” He lifted his head, bleary eyes squinting at you through a haze of drunkenness. You grinned, snatching his warmed whiskey from his hands. He didn’t try to stop you, but instead grinned sloppily at you.

“Finally crawled outta your hole, did ya?” He slurs, leaning into you, laughing when you took a heavy gulp of his drink. It was watered down, the ice cubes long gone.

You shrugged again, glancing around at the dancing crowd. “Figured I should do some socializing for once.”

“Yeah, y’know who you should do that with?” He says, pushing himself around to face you on his stool. His arm is heavy as he slings it over your shoulders, holding you close. From rekindling your friendship with him, you knew MacCready wasn’t trying to put the moves on you, and you relish the contact. He instead points towards the back of the bar, where the heavy red lighting of the VIP section bled into the darkness of the rest of the club. “There’sa ghoul back there tha’s been askin’ questions ‘bout ya, and I think you know who that’d be, hm? Maybe you should go see what he wants, huh?”

You choke a little on his whiskey at the smirk he gives you, and he laughs, playfully roughing up your shoulders and into his chest.

“W-What...questions?” You gasp, repressing the urge to glance over your shoulder as you cough. You wouldn’t have seen through the smoke or the crowd anyway.

MacCready chuckles and leans back, head looking a little unstable on his neck. He shrugs, and for a moment he looks like a smug fucking bobble head. “I ‘unno. You’d have to go and _ask_.”

You bite your lip and finish off his whiskey, and he yells out for Charlie over the din, who gives him an earful of his own for being so loud.

“It’s loud as fuck in here, man, you really gonna rip in’a me _now?_ ” MacCready’s leaning across the bar, poking a finger at the metal bartender. You don’t pay too much attention, knowing that MacCready needed to get his ass kicked sometimes when he gets wound up. You dig out some caps, and hand them over to Charlie, who gives you a refill without breaking his argument with the young merc.

It takes you one more refill before you build up the courage to walk through the crowd to the back of the bar. Ham is making his way towards MacCready, and you definitely don’t want to be around for that inevitable brawl.

The red light is harsh, but you can just make out Nate in the VIP lounge area, but no Hancock. The door to the private room behind it is shut, and you wonder if he’s in there. Nate is talking with Magnolia, which intimidates the shit out of you. The few times she’s been in the bar during the day, she’s always been sweet to you, but you don’t want to interrupt if they’re flirting with each other.

You’re hovering awkwardly when Nate sees you. He grins and gestures for you to sit on the other side of him on the couch, moving his crutch. Magnolia smiles at you, taking a drag from her cigarette.

“Hey!” Nate has to shout over Big Maybelle bellowing out flirtatious calls for you to dance. You sit on the edge of the seat, angling towards Nate and Magnolia. “How’re you doing? Haven’t seen you in a bit!”

You nod. “Doing alright! ‘Specially now,” you say, waggling your cup in the air. Nate grins and raises his beer to you, clinking your glass with his. Your cigarette is just going out, and Magnolia is offering you one of her own, which you take gratefully. “How’s the leg?”

Nate pats it with a smile. “Dr. Amari thinks I’ll be walking without the crutch well enough by the end of the week!” You nod and smile, fishing in your pocket for your pack of Mentats. You try not to be self-conscious when Nate watches you curiously as you pop one of the chalky tablets in your mouth. It tastes terrible with the whiskey, but you ignore that in favor of vigorously chewing it and washing it down fast.

He’s suddenly leaning in, all broad, filled out muscles closer than he’s been before. His arm rests along the back of the couch, boxing you in. You blink in surprise, and he smells and looks fantastic under the smokey air and the red light above your heads. The Mentat isn’t working yet, so your heart hammers in your chest.

“Have you thought about my offer?” He props his cheek on his fist, grinning boyishly, eyelids flickering with intoxication, and you feel a familiar tingling wave of attraction wash over you.

“Uh.” You gulp down another sip of whiskey. “Not really? How long until you’re approved to wander the Wastes again, Survivor?” Ah. That teasing sarcasm would be the Mentats fizzling with the whiskey. It makes him grin and you squeeze your legs together bashfully. Magnolia seems unfazed by losing Nate’s attention, engrossed in conversation with someone on the couch adjacent to her now.

Nate shrugs, eyes dipping down the cigarette between your fingers. You offer it to him, but he shakes his head. “Probably another week or so. So not much time for you to decide.” You’re nodding with an air of thoughtfulness when he blurts out, “You look great tonight, by the way.”

You blanch at his earnest glance, and you can’t help the smile that curls your lips. You duck your head away, bringing your cigarette to your lips, hoping the nicotine will calm your heart. You’re murmuring your thanks to a grinning Vaultie when the back room door opens, emitting two people. A young woman strolls out, looking ruffled but with her hips swaying with an air of sexual satisfaction, and John Hancock pulling his frock back on as he follows.

You gulp down the searing disappointment at the sight, trying to hold onto the preening feeling you’d had under Nate’s compliment. You’re unnaturally aware of the flirtatious smirk the woman tosses Hancock over her shoulder, and the one he returns, before she’s sauntering off. Nate’s calling out to Hancock with a laugh, and you see the ghoul’s dark eyes swing your way. There’s not a hitch in his movements as he makes his way over. He flops down beside you, his thigh and hip pressing up against yours with how little space there is. He’s warm, way too warm, and he’d run hot the other night in the rain when he touched you, but you think the heat radiating off of him tonight is for an entirely different reason than you’re comfortable with in an already humid, underground bar--especially knowing what he was probably doing with that woman back there, and it only stokes the negative feelings brewing in your gut.

You shift slightly towards Nate.

The feelings you have are unfounded, you know that, and the irrationality of them has you angry at yourself. He isn’t yours, and likely never will be. You don’t think you’re even capable of connecting with him on a semi-personal level based on the fact that him and the feelings you have for him intimidate you so badly. You find your disappointment fixating upon your own inaction. If you were anything like that woman, the kind of woman that he seems to find attractive, you could have his attention just the way you want. You have to smooth the frown away from your face with your hand, knowing that you were never going to be or act like that, ever.

The sound of your name brings you back into the fold of conversation, though you’re sitting stiffly. Your eyes flit around before you lean back, and Magnolia is watching you from the end of the bar, a cocktail in hand. When she teleported to the other side of the room, you don’t know. She smiles, one that seems a little sad, and your face is on fire and you want to run for the hills and never look back.

“I was just askin’ if she would be joinin’ us when I’m better.” Nate said to Hancock, leaning across you a little to talk to him over the music. The ghoul hums around his cigarette, but you keep your eyes down on your glass of whiskey.

“Probably be good for us,” you hear the mayor mumble, and you’re shocked enough to look at him. He’s got his head tilted back into the top corner of the couch, and his face is hidden almost completely by the shadow of his hat. There’s two bright dots, a reflection of red light back at you from his eyes that has you pinned to your spot, nearly against Nate’s chest behind you.

“Been a while since I wandered around the Wastes, and you,” the ghoul points at Nate, “don’t know shit about any of this. You know how to survive out there, doll.” His shoulders shrug, and his hand holding his cigarette rises to his mouth. The cherry lights the deep scars and lines of his face enough for you to catch a glimpse of him. His lips are curled in a smirk. “You can come and try n’keep us from starvin’ t’death.”

You make a face down at your drink, one you hope neither of them see in the dark. With their experience, they definitely know the biggest concern about being in the Wastes wasn’t fucking starvation, but mutilation. And if their expectations were mainly around you feeding them, then you probably wouldn’t want to be going anywhere with them at all. You take a deep drink of whiskey. You certainly didn’t spend almost your whole life in the Wastes to be turned into a glorified nanny for two grown men.

Nate chuckles behind you and stands, saying something about getting himself another beer. With the space on the couch freed up behind you, you shift away from John Hancock’s searing body heat. You mindlessly pat around for your Mentats, finding the small tin of moisturizer instead. After a pause, you crack it open and put some on your hands just to have something to do with them before digging out the pack of Mentats in your inner jacket pocket.

The mayor shifts beside you as you pop another one. You’re starting to get a headache, and the berry Mentats definitely don’t help, but it manages it and calms your nerves. Besides, this was your night to let loose and enjoy yourself, even if the man you’re attracted to is fucking other women in the back of the only bar in town and saying dumb shit like its a good idea. With that thought, you pop a second one because you can.

Hancock laughs warmly and sits up, once again sitting closer than you want, but grudgingly like. “At the expense of sounding like a greedy addict with an itch, you got any t’share? Berry’s my favorite.” You’re subjected to a goofy grin from the ghoul, and he taps his hat upwards so you can see his bottomless eyes.

Against your bitter gut, you do laugh softly, finding the comment cute. You give him two as well, and he bows his head forward with a quiet thanks and pops both of them in his mouth. You watch his jaw work as he chews, the sharp line of it flexing the muscles that climb his temple and down his neck.

He turns to you again, and raises his arm over your head, resting it along the back of the couch, much like Nate had done earlier. His movement felt more feline and practiced, the half-popped collar of his frock brushing that sculpted jawline as he tilted his head purposefully, the ridiculous frilled tunic underneath it parting to reveal the ruined grooves of his chest that you’re dying to explore. He crossed the leg closest to you over his other, once again pressing his thigh into yours.

“You gotta tell me more about bein’ a Raider,” he murmurs, jaw jumping as he bites through one of the Mentat tabs in his mouth. His voice is deep and raspy, and seems to travel to your ear despite the smooth crooning Johnny Mercer over the speakers. His breath smells like whiskey and the familiar berry of the Mentats you’d just shared with him, and while the two taste terrible together, it smells fantastic in contrast.

Speaking of, you were feeling the familiar ease running through you again, and you sipped your whiskey and put out your cigarette in the ashtray before you. When you lean back, you get a whiff of some kind of vanilla-esque perfume that has your stomach flipping acidically.

You shrug, feeling how you felt when Nate had complimented you before with a mixture of nausea. Aroused, but irritated. God, you were all over the place emotionally when Hancock was around. What the fuck is wrong with you? This can’t be healthy.

“What do you want to know? It was a life that I found unfulfilling and too unpredictable and dangerous to be worth it.” You found the courage to watch Hancock put his cigarette in his mouth and dig around for his pack. He offered you one, and you took it. Then came him lighting it. You kept your eye on the flame, not wanting to see his face when his hand was so close to your mouth.

“I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know much about ya, doll,” he says, lowering his lighter and removing the smoke from his mouth. His hand comes down to rest on his ankle, and you’re sure he only needed one hand to wrap around both of your ankles and still have his thumbs and fingers touch they were so big. “Hearin’ you were a Raider at some point surprised me. It got me thinkin’ ‘bout why a woman like you’d be endin’ up livin’ that kinda life.”

You furrow your brow and sip your whiskey. You meet his gaze and grip your glass tightly. “What kind of woman am I, Mayor Hancock?” It sounds flirtier than you meant it, and you’re a little frustrated when he smirks at your mild glare. You feel his fingers tap rhythmically to the music next to your far shoulder.

His tongue pops out of his mouth, wetting his lips. As quick as you saw it, it’s gone, and you try to look anywhere but his mouth, throwing your gaze out into the crowd around you.

“One that’s considerate. Puttin’ others before herself. Committed to her stand-up job. Loyal. Those aren’t traits you find in Raiders, hun.” His smooth voice is curling around your brain and heart, squeezing and impounding itself into your thoughts and body like a viper with prey. The nerves are back, though muted, and you’ve probably ruined the underwear you have on. You hadn’t realized you’d revealed so much of yourself to the Mayor in such a short period of interaction, and his honeyed, honest words sounded better than any compliment about your clothes.

You wonder how long he’s been thinking about you, or if his words even mean anything at all.

You spy Nate chatting up Magnolia again, leaning in close with her against the bar like he’d done to you. Maybe he has no concept of personal space when he’s been drinking. You were aware he had hang ups about his wife. Perhaps he was looking to get lost for a night. You wonder, if he asked, if you would take him up on that offer? What would Hancock think of that?

_Fucking nothing, that’s what._

You turn to look at Hancock again, and find him a little closer than he was before. His gaze is intense, even though it’s impossible to figure out what part of your face he’s looking at.

He’s talking again, and your eyes mindlessly lower to look at his lips. “You seem trustworthy, and I wouldn’t mind gettin’ to know you better. Besides, it’d be fun to have another person roamin’ around with us.” He pulls away as if he hadn’t made a classic pick-up line sound completely casual. His arm is still along the back of the couch, touching your shoulders, but he’s not as close, and he’s not looking at you anymore.

You try not to put too much stock in the comment, but it does make you feel good that he’s expressed an interest in you, at least on a friendly level. It surprised you, especially given your heavily negative thoughts since he appeared.

Gathering some courage, you gulped down the rest of your drink. “I, uh.” His head swings around to look at you, and he blinks slowly. His fingers tap along the back of the couch to the beat of the song playing from the juke in the corner, the minute vibrations feeling bigger than they are. One slips and brushes down your neck, slowly tracing a burning path into the collar of your shirt before pausing. “I’d...I need to go. G-Goodnight.”

You want to punch yourself for not saying what you intended to say. You put the glass down on the table and stand, straightening out your jacket and hair. Glancing back down at Hancock, you catch his eye.

He stands, and you’re once again surprised by how tall he is. He always looks so short next to Nate, but he’s head and shoulders taller than you. “Need me to walk ya home?” You stumble trying to take a step back, and he grabs your forearm, easily keeping you upright. You shake your head, but he frowns, hand sliding down your arm to hold your hand tightly. “Y’sure? You seem pretty fucked, doll.”

Those words send you down a rabbit hole of inappropriate thoughts that have to do with him walking you home and you getting fucked in other ways. His thumb stokes the back of your hand, fingers massaging your palm of its tension, and you get a pretty good idea of what his hands would feel like roaming your body instead.

You nod quickly, and his grip loosens when you try to slip your hand from his.

“Have a good night, Mayor Hancock.”

He assaults you with a handsome grin, flashing surprisingly bright and straight teeth at you. The red glare of the light makes him look dangerous and appetizing.

“You can call me John, sweetheart.”

\--

John watches you scuttle through the crowd. He rubs his fingers together where he had held your hand, feeling a little of the lotion he had watched you apply earlier. With no shame, he takes his cigarette out of his mouth and raises his other hand to his nose, inhaling deeply. His senses are filled with a heady lavender-like scent that’s not overwhelming, and he’s brought back to the way you looked under the crimson light, chin dimurly tucked close to your shoulder, eyes hooded and brows down while you asked him to reveal what knowledge he proclaimed to have about you.

He sighs a lungful of smoke and sits down, kicking a foot up and staring down at his lap. He grimaces, wiping at the faint cum stains left behind after his rendezvous earlier. It had been fun, but not as satisfying as it had been last time, which he was willing to admit happened from time to time. He enjoyed sex, but he knew he sometimes supplemented it for actual, meaningful human interactions, which didn’t scratch that itch to have a nice conversation with someone who gave a shit about what he had to say and had something significant to say back. Don’t even get him started on the lack of romance in his life. Some women liked to talk before or afterwards, but only on occasion had it ever felt more than superficial banter.

He casts a glance in the direction of the bar’s exit, thoughtful.

Nate plops down beside him and immediately shifts. He digs under his thigh, pulling out a flat and round tin that John recognizes as yours.

Nate moves to open it, beer between his legs. “What’s--”

Hancock snatches it from his hands, clicking the lid shut again. Nate blinks at him blearily, clearly caught off guard by Hancock’s grab. The mayor tucks it into the inner pocket of his coat. “Don’t worry about it. Just drugs.” He lies easily, though it would have been just as simple to tell the truth.

Nate raises his hands, leaning back in his seat. “Okay. That’s cool.” He chuckles, and starts nursing his beer. “Too bad you guys don’t have weed anymore.”

Hancock raises a brow, tilting his head towards his friend. “Weeds? Plenty of those around, my friend.”

Nate snorted and quickly had to wipe his mouth and nose. “N-No, weed. Slang for marijuana.”

The mayor leaned back and smirked at Nate. “Mari-what now? Tell me about your favorite drug, Vaultie.”

Rolling his eyes, Nate turned towards him, eyes out on Magnolia, who had just taken to the stage. “It’s called marijuana. It was technically a flower, but people called it weed. You could dry it out, grind it down and smoke it like a cigarette. It honestly kind of felt like Jet, but without the chemical aftertaste, and it was natural. You could even make it into oil and butter. People got real creative with it.” Nate shrugs, taking a larger gulp of beer.

Hancock nods appreciatively, thumbing the canister in his pocket. “Sounds real nice. Wonder if it’s still around somewhere.”

“Probably,” Nate murmured wistfully, eyes a little more vacant than before. John recognized that look. His friend was thinking about the past, about better times in his life. John let him reminisce, turning his own gaze out onto the crowd.

Some time passed before Nate bade him goodnight, limping out of the bar. John watched him go, tugging the canister from his pocket and popping it open. It was clearly used often, a small portion of the bottom of the tin reflecting red light back at him through what appeared to be a white cream. There was some on the lid, and Hancock dipped two fingers in, rubbing his hands together and spreading it along his ruined skin.

It felt nice and hydrating. Soothing, with a cooling quality to it. His hands flexed and he raised them to his nose, cupping them over the lower half of his face and inhaling deeply.

His eyes fluttered open. Damn, that smelled _real_ good.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! I know it's been a while, but my semester has finally ended and now I don't feel guilty working on my stories lol
> 
> Also, apologies for not replying to comments quickly. They make me kind of anxious even though everyone has been so nice, so I don't know why!
> 
> But enjoy, this is a shorter chapter than usual but I've had it written for a long time and felt weird trying to work in another scene.
> 
> THIS CHAPTER HAS DEPICTIONS OF DRUG-INDUCED HALLUCINATIONS.

You had looked everywhere in your apartment for the small tin of moisturizer before concluding that you had left it at the bar. Slinking through the rain like an angry cat, you were only more annoyed to not find it anywhere among the couch cushions, nor had Charlie, Magnolia or Ham picked up anything of the like from last night.

Back through the rain and into your apartment, you set about making more, loudly. No one would hear your anger except for your few neighbors, but it made you feel better. You had nothing to store it in but large glass jars, but you needed something to do with your built up energy after your encounter with Hancock last night and your hangover, and this was a good outlet.

The sweet smell of agave, lavender and mint filled your bathroom as you worked, your back leaning against the porcelain wall of your tub, your tools spread around you. The smell was calming your nerves and even though you were left with a large jar of moisturizer you knew you wouldn’t be able to completely use before it went bad, you felt better leaving your bathroom after you were done than when you had when you entered it earlier that day.

“I hope whoever found my lotion actually uses it.” You mutter as you place your ridiculously large jar into your fridge with the other supplies that didn’t need cleaning. You’d get to them later.

You started boiling water to run a bath for yourself, excited for the cooling sensation of the moisturizer once you were done. It took a few potfulls until the tub was reasonably filled, and the tenseness you had felt since last night eased away when you finally sank in. With a book and a bottle of cheap wine, you let yourself settle in until the water cooled naturally. The sky started going dark as you drank and read, and by the time it got too hard to keep reading (either from the lack of light or from your inebriation), you had decided that it was definitely a good time to smear yourself in moisturizer and pass out in your bed.

You were cleaning up your bathroom when there was a knock on your door.

You froze and stared incredulously at the wood. The only person who ever knocked on your door was MacCready, and that was usually when he needed you to watch Duncan while he left town for a job. While you loved the kid, and he was always an angel for you when his dad was away, you definitely weren’t in the mood to babysit for a week. The brief thought of pretending you weren’t home flashed through your mind, but that had never worked in the past. RJ would just pick the lock because he had no respect for your privacy, the bastard, and the second you’d turn your back he’d have snuck his son through the doorway. It was also pretty late, meaning it was more than likely an emergency if he was coming to your now.

You sighed a groan. You had a hard time telling RJ no, anyway, especially when Duncan looked just like he did back at Little Lamplight.

Fumbling with the tie of your robe, you pinned up the damp ends of your hair so they wouldn’t soak the fabric and shuffled to the door.

“RJ, seriously, now is not--”

An incredible embarrassment came over you when you opened the door to find Mayor Hancock casually leaning against the wall opposite you instead of your old friend and his kid like you were expecting.

A hand comes up and clutches at the two sides of your robe at your neck, clenching them together. Mayor Hancock seems momentarily stunned, blinking owlishly at you from under the brim of his hat. If his eyelids hadn’t briefly flickered with the downward movement of his onyx eyes, you wouldn’t have ever known that he was looking you over in your nearly nude state. Even though the robe fell to your shins you still felt completely exposed.

“Sorry to, ah. Interrupt.” He pushes from the wall and steps forward, a hand retreating from his pocket to rub the back of his neck. He blinks again at you while you stare back before he’s shoving his hand into his frock and digging around near his chest. “You left...this at the Third Rail the other night. Figured you’d probably want it back.”

He holds out the tin of your moisturizer. It hovers in the space between the two of you. Hancock drops his hand and gives you a bemused look. He looks down at the tin. “This is yours, right?” He flips it over and back again before his gaze lifts to you once more.

You jump from your stupor when he says your name questioningly. “O-Oh, uh, yeah. Yes. That’s mine. Thank you.” His fingers brush yours when he hands it over, and you frown down at the familiar residue that comes away from the touch. You raise an eyebrow. “You used it?”

His hands end up shoved deep in his pockets, and you watch him stare out the hallway window outside your door. “Yeah. Liked it a lot.” He gives you a handsome self-deprecating grin. “You got any more of that stuff?”

Like a whirlwind, the small, stupid fantasy you’d had last night about sharing your moisturizer with him returns and takes your breath away. You clutch your small tin to your chest and nod stiffly. You step backwards into your apartment, and watch your mayor lean heavily against the moulding of your front door, curious eyes glancing at you, then around at what he can see of your home.

You turn your back and keep it to him as you dig around for another glass bottle. While you’re separating half of your new supply into the one for the mayor, you start to sweat. You’re still warm from your hot bath, and the nerves you’re feeling aren’t helping. Your hands are shaking slightly, but you don’t make a mess. Stoppering the bottle, you deftly adjust your robe and cinch the belt tight before you turn.

His head jumps up, eyes on you from where they had been peering down at the worn book on the end table wedged between your couch and the front door. His eyes flicker again, and you’re more than aware of the fact that your robe is fitting tighter to your body than before. He straightens when you present the bottle to him, hardly able to keep eye contact like he could.

“Keep it cool. It’ll last longer.” Your voice is annoyingly breathy, and you clear your throat.

“Thank you. ‘Preciate it.” His whole hand wraps around the bottle with ease, his other digging around in another pocket for a small handful of caps. “Probably ain’t cheap to make this stuff, huh?”

You try to wave away his smile and payment. “It-It’s really nothing, Mr. Hancock, it’s my pleasure.”

He tsks and gives you a playfully admonishing look that seems to burn some of the tense atmosphere away. The hand holding the bottle comes up, two fingers hooking around some of yours to draw your hand down, and he puts the caps in your palm. “What’d I tell you ‘bout calling me John? Mr. Hancock makes me feel old.”

You curl your fingers around the money just to get them out of his grip, knowing your palms are sweaty. You can’t help but laugh a little at what he says, unable to tell how old he actually is due to his goulification and knowing he's probably very old. He seems pleased to have gained a laugh from you, if the handsome smile sent your way is anything to go by when you glance up. Butterflies suddenly awaken in your tummy, and you take a deep breath to quell your jittery body.

He doesn’t immediately leave. You raise an eyebrow at him, feeling more exposed in your robe the longer you stand before him. “Um--”

His shoulder is up against the door pane again. “You think about Nate’s offer anymore?”

Your lips press together, and you cross your arms over your chest. “I told you, Mr. Hancock--” his eyes roll, to your mild offense. You huff and press on, “--I don’t… _do_ that kind of work anymore.”

His chin tilts back, and you recognize a challenging smirk when you see one. “You ‘fraid?”

His question feels almost childish with its daring tone, and yet it still gets a rise out of you. “ _Yes_ ,” you stress without shame, and he barks a laugh, grin widening. He leans back and seems to lose his balance slightly, relying heavily on gripping your door panel for support. You narrow your eyes, scrutinizing his demeanor, arms tightening around your front. “There’s a lot to be afraid of out there.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, shrugging a shoulder dismissively. Your head snakes backwards at his tone. “There’s always gonna be stuff to be afraid of. Nuclear hellscape or not.”

You stare at each other, his stupid, handsome grin never faltering. You shake your head. “So you agree with me.”

He huffs another laugh, this one less amused as the last. “No. What I’m saying is it’s a waste of time worryin’ about all the things there are to be scared of, ‘cuz those things are never gonna go away. What you should be worried about is what you’re missin’ out on.”

You try to pretend his comment doesn’t hit you so hard by shaking your head again. “I know what I’m missing. There’s nothing worth seeing that I would risk my life for anymore."

“You ever been to the ocean?” His sudden question has you blinking rapidly.

“I--Yes--I’ve seen it.” He raises a non-existent brow at you. You gesture lamely, eyes unable to hold his gaze. “From the...the buildings--”

He waves your sentence out of the air like an annoying fly. “Look, I know you’re _bored_ here, (Name).” You have the sudden realization that you might be having an argument with the mayor, and the absurdity of that thought makes you laugh in disbelief. “I know you want something a little more exciting. Why else would you be a raider, huh? Travel all over? Do what you do for Daisy?” He sways in towards you, brow muscle jumping up. “You’re fuckin’ _bored_.”

Your heart is pounding for reasons other than your attraction to the ghoul before you. “What the hell would you know about how I feel? What my reasons are, or were?” Your voice shakes and rises in pitch, the surprising confrontation rushing adrenaline through your blood. Your fists clench where you’ve shoved them into your armpits, nails digging into your palms in an effort to keep you from laying Hancock out flat.

“‘Cuz you look like you’re havin’ the time of your _fuckin’_ life sittin’ at Daisy’s counter,” Hancock drolls sarcastically, rolling his eyes again. “You always look like you’d rather be doing anything else than starin’ out at the barrier wall every goddamn day.”

You fail to notice, in the moment, how perceptive he’s been of your behavior behind Daisy’s counter. “My job is _fine_ \--” You feel a prickly, infuriating blush rising along your neck and cheeks.

“What you’re good at is sneakin’ around and collecting things, or so says Daisy--”

“--because I need to be--!” Obviously. He’d be getting that if you weren’t stumbling over your words like an idiot! If he would actually listen to you!

“--and yet you’re wasting that skill tinkering, and making drugs. Working 9-5 and only ever getting a lick o’that excitement the few times a month Daisy sends you out.” When had he stepped so close? He was nearly over the threshold of your doorway, leaning closer. “And you tell yourself that’s enough to keep you satisfied, and that the excitement you feel is fear.”

“Get out.” Your tone turns hard, and you reach out to grasp the edge of the door to close it. Hancock shoves his boot against it, the hard thump of the rubber sole and steel toe making the wood shake in your grasp. Your incredulous glare seems to draw him out of whatever anger he’d fallen into.

“Wait, listen,” his tone is softer now, staring down at you intensely. “I’ve only been Mayor for four years, and I’m fuckin’ drained. It’s stuffy and boring and the same shit day after day. I’ve been done with it for a while. Out there, there ain’t no responsibilities except to myself and Nate.” His eyes flick over you. “And you, if you want. We’ll keep each other safe.”

“To be honest, I don’t think either of you really appreciate what it means to fucking live day after day out there, especially after your comments from last night.” It’s his turn to frown and stand straight in surprise, staring down at you in confusion. You take that chance to end this ridiculous conversation, voice quivering from rage and adrenaline, affecting you all the way to your shaking grip on your door. “Good night, Mayor Hancock.”

Despite your stern voice, he stands there for a second, weathering the press of your weight against your door. When he pulls back it slams shut in his face. You’re quick to throw the locks, pressing your entire body against it as if he was going to burst back in because he changed his mind.

You fumble for the pack of cigarettes on your kitchen counter when you finally leave your door, scoffing numerous times at John Hancock’s audacity. Who the fuck does he think he _is?_ What the fuck did he know about you to say _anything_ about your lifestyle? About the choices you’ve had to make? How long had he been thinking about this?

You inhale deeply, too hard for your lungs to handle so suddenly, and cough out puffs of smoke, eyes starting to water.

\--

He said _way_ too much. He said _way too fucking much_.

And fuck. What dumb shit did he say last night?

John wiggles his jaw as he stumbles down the stairs of the apartment complex, the arm not holding his precious jar of moisturizer braced outwards. He’d definitely done too much of...whatever it was he’d done before coming over. He doesn't even remember how he got to your apartment, but he had no right to say those things to you, and yet he’d still word-vomited all over you once his thoughts had suddenly aligned with his mouth.

“Fuck,” he groaned, posting up next to the door that led outside. His hands clench, and one closes tightly over the glass bottle in hand. Fumbling slightly, he pops open the top, and if he’d had a nose anymore it would have been shoved through the opening at the top with how close he presses his face to the opening.

He inhales deeply, some part of him hoping it’ll ground him. Even with his eyes closed, he knows the walls are still pulsing an almost imperceivable green to red and back. The world is spinning despite the void his eyelids create and he has to open them again before he falls over completely. It takes him a moment to realize he won’t fall because his shoulder is shoved deep into the corner by the front door. He just feels like he’s falling because he’s leaning so extremely. 

The heady smell of lavender and something sweeter bring a burst of purples and greens and blues swirling behind his closed eyes. The slight sting of mint is so strong he has to pull his face away, the tingling spreading along what’s left of his cheeks and top lip. He sees you, in unfocused patches of maroon and periwinkle, like a stamp behind his eyelids, fitted just between your open door and the doorpane, and when he opens his eyes there’s an afterimage of your unhappiness with him slowly fading from the corner of his eye, that he frustratingly cannot seem to look at directly. His heart thuds heavily back against the wall propping him up, and he tries to swallow it back down before his nerves overwhelm him completely.

You’d really looked gorgeous in that robe, with your hair down and enjoying your own company. He’s never seen you relaxed, and the thought that he’d ruined your night, been an absolute ass to you, echoes through his head and builds a nauseating amount of anxiety in his stomach. He knows that doesn’t mix well with the drugs, tunnel vision on how he upset you burrowing deeper into his brain now that he’s alone and too introspective. The whole building suddenly feels like its pressing down upon him with the weight of your emotions, knowing that you stand somewhere just above him in whatever state he'd left you in.

Getting his feet under him and standing straight just makes him feel like he’s falling up. He cusses again, barely able to shove the stopper back in before he’s ripping the door open. It bounces off the wall as he strides through. The air is cool, the temperature dropping now that the sun is completely set, and he breathes it in to his hot lungs. He takes deep lungfuls before he starts to feel dizzy, and leans back against the damp brick behind him.

He gets a few greetings, and he nods back silently, staring at the way the light bulbs of the lamps and the street signs wiggle like worms in wet dirt. It isn’t uncommon for him to be seen this out of it on drugs, but he appreciates the few who ask if he’s okay. He reassures them with a wordless laugh and waves them off, pushing off the wall and tripping his way down the alleyway, away from the Third Rail, and to the quieter entrance of the Old State House. He makes sure to avoid the bricks that wobble and suddenly drop away to whatever nothingness lies beneath.

As he’s shouldering his way through the door, he’s suddenly in his office, sunk into his jacket and sprawled out on the sofa, blinking groggily and feeling like there’s cotton wads shoved in his cheeks. Against his chest is the jar of lotion, and he carefully places it on the table beside him before his arm falls limp.

Thankfully, everything around him seems to have relaxed. Everything only feels like it’s breathing, but that’s better than what he was hallucinating before.

“Look who's awake!” Fahrenheit's voice is loud and unforgiving, like a bullet through glass. Hancock hisses and glares up at her as she comes into view. “How ya feelin’, champ?” The scar on her face looks like it’s crawling along the width of her cheek, and her skin looks more green and yellow than usual.

“...shuthefuhgup,” he garbles, swatting at her unsuccessfully when she reached down to pat his cheek with a cold hand. It feels nice but he does not want to be touched right now. She only snorts, baring her usual grimacing sneer down at him that looks a little more forced than usual.

She steps backwards and collapses on the couch across from him. She tosses something across the space, and he grunts when it bounces off his stomach. To his relief, its a bottle of purified water.

He gulps it down greedily, gasping for a breath before finishing off the bottle. “What time is it?” His head pounds in the light of the room, despite there being only a single lamp on, the one on his desk, hidden away by the back of the couch he was digging himself into.

“Like. 4 in the morning.”

“Then fuck off and lemme sleep,” he grouches, weakly jerking himself out of his frock and tossing it to the floor with his hat. His boots are kicked off, one slamming into the table and jostling everything on it. He shoves his face down against the back of the couch, and behind his eyelids he sees the appalled look on your face at his rash, drug-slicked words. He groans, but this is one of complete embarrassment, and is easy for Fahrenheit to mistake it for another one of pain.

“God, when did you become such a pussy? What the fuck did you do last night? Huh? What--or who--wrecked you, Hancock?”

John rarely ever found himself short of patience, but with his current fatigue and his fractured, embarrassing memories in his head, he really didn’t have a lot left to deal with Fahrenheit’s ribbing.

“Turn off the light on your way out,” he grunts, dragging the blanket on the back of the couch over his body and upwards to conceal all of him from the outside world. He hugs a musty throw pillow to his face, rubbing his face into the strange but pleasant feeling fabric.

His attempt to eject her from his office failed. “You really were rushing to get away from Camilla, weren’t you? You should have seen the look on her face! You practically tossed her off the couch on your way out!” Fahrenheit laughs, loudly.

“Holy shit, Fahr, _get the fuck out!_ ” He snapped, twisting around to snarl at her. She cackled and finally relented, standing and strolling to the door.

“Fine, you fucking grump. Hope whoever you banged instead was worth it!” She swung the door open and turned to leer at him. “Next time you come home black out, don’t make such a racket. Getting woken up so early pissed me off.”

She slams the door shut behind her after flicking the light off. Finally, blissful darkness and silence.

John sinks down onto the couch, arm hooked over the back. Bits and pieces were coming back to him from Fahrenheit’s short tale.

As usual, Camilla had found him down in the Third Rail. He, Fahrenheit, Nate and some others he doesn’t quite remember had all gotten smashed. He and Fahr had been inhaling Jet like nobody’s business, and he was popping Mentats like they were going out of style. It had been fun and wild. He doesn’t even remember half of what they had talked about, but it had been a riot.

In private throughout the day he had been using your lotion on his hands. Since his ghoulification, his skin had never felt more hydrated, and it smelled amazing. Not a lot smelled so good in the Wastes these days. In his heavily inebriated state, he’d slipped the tin of lotion out of his coat pocket when the desire had struck him there and then, unabashed, at the same time Camilla had plopped down next to him.

Sweet, beautiful, _whole_ Camilla. But only if things were going her way. She was young, expectant, and so used to being cared for. The only way she knew how to survive in a world like this.

As he had been clumsily smearing the lotion over his hands and wrists, appreciating the moisture brought back to the ruined skin, she’d snatched it up from his pliant hands to take a sniff.

“This is nice, Mr. Hancock. Mind if I have some?” She’d batted her lashes flirtatiously and never waited for him to reply. That’s how she’d been during sex and with his drug stash, too, the times he’d brought her up to his rooms. Taking and using without consideration. It didn’t take him long to stop inviting her upstairs.

This, however, was not his to give. He already knew he shouldn’t have been using it, seeing as it didn’t belong to him, but someone else emulating his actions was not only embarrassing but somewhat angering. Not to mention that he had been growing tired of Camilla’s attitude and self-perceived charms. He had been seeking her company less and less, though often falling for her sweet words if he was particular lonely or inebriated. Because he knew deep down her words weren’t lies, just untruths. She was just as lonely and sad as he was, just like everyone fucking else, and that made it so easy to fall into her when she acted like she really needed _him_ , even when he knew it wasn't actually what she wanted.

One more thing that was driving him out of Goodneighbor.

Before she could dip her fingers in, he’d wrapped his hand around her wrist and tugged it away. She giggled, like it was a game, and tried to hold the tin away from him when he reached for it, only to crawl into his lap like he was asking for something else.

“Don’t wanna share, Mr. Mayor?” She’d breathed, pressing a rough kiss close to where his ear used to be. A sensitive spot, depending on the situation, and he flinched under the touch.

His other hand gripped her arm tight, pushing her torso back and away from him. Her smile fell at his impersonal handling and the frown on his face, and he was finally able to pull the open tin away from her in her moment of shock.

“No.” He grunted, dragging her gracelessly off his lap and onto her back on the couch with a cool glare. “I don’t.”

Their struggle had caught the eyes of other patrons in the bar, and John quickly snapped the tin shut and stood, the world spinning around him suddenly. Someone said his name, but he ignored them, overcome with a sudden need to return your property to you, something he should have done immediately.

In the present darkness of his office, John pressed his lips into an exasperated frown, grumbling and curling up protectively. The things he had said to you had mostly been projection. Sure, he thought you did look bored sometimes, sitting pretty at Daisy’s and tinkering on the things she needed fixed, but at the end of the day, he didn’t know you. He didn’t know if you enjoyed your time at the shop, or being alone, or whatever you did in your own time.

John sat around in the Old State House or in the Third Rail and got high all the time, maybe gave an impassioned speech every now and then if he was feeling particularly inspired. Not that getting high or inspiring others was the problem. It was the fact he wasn’t doing anything else that was the issue. At least until Nate invited him along to traipse across the Wastes in search of the man’s lost son.

Some part of him didn’t want to come back to Goodneighbor when he and Nate were on the road. It was nice when he was taking watch at night, and he could pretend that he was travelling alone, that he was on the way to do the things he had always been too afraid to do as John McDonough, and too tied down as Mayor John Hancock.

While he and Nate had become fast and easy friends through their travels, it was only ever meant to be temporary before he returned to his position as full time Mayor. Fahrenheit only reminded him every single time he came back that she fucking hated doing his job for him, adding more and more on to the pressure and guilt he felt for desiring his freedom at all.

He saw some of himself in you, as you sat silently smoking in the back of Daisy’s with glazed eyes, only ever with MacCready or probably alone when you weren’t at work, and unable to see anything worthwhile beyond the walls around you. It resonated deeply with him, and just maybe, possibly, some part of you found his assumptions to be at least somewhat correct.

That projection was no excuse for his words, no matter how he tried to spin it as helpful advice in his head.

Slowly, John fell into an uneasy sleep, hoping at least _one_ person changed because of his actions tonight.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is about twice as long as my usual chapters, and I hope you like it! A lot of heavy and confusing emotions all around because our dear reader is a sensitive soul and John is just a mess, but things will get better :) I am also only one lady, so if there are mistakes I apologize. I'll probably notice them myself in a week as I critique myself over and over again.
> 
> Also there's a lil bit of sadboi smut at the end, just a heads up lol
> 
> Also, happy Gregorian New Year! The start of my year was not great, but we can only go up from here, or so they tell me.
> 
> Please leave a comment! I love those things and promise to respond to them asap!
> 
> <3

“Have you ever seen the ocean?”

Daisy’s head popped up from where she was examining a gun you’d cleaned and assembled for her. With a heavy frown on her face, she gazed at you critically where you sat at the front counter.

A cold front had blown in during the night. Both of you were wearing multiple layers, cigarettes dangling from each of your mouths. The hot smoke felt warming, in a way, when it pooled in your lungs and dragged between your lips.

You were resolutely staring at the yellow curtain used to cover the shop gate. It was blowing in the cold wind that was assailing Boston, and you kept your hands shoved deep into the pockets of your well-worn Brahmin-hide jacket, cigarette nearly burning a hole in your scarf with it wrapped so high up your neck. Standing out in the courtyard are two members of the Neighborhood Watch, bundled up and smoking as well, pacing back and forth in an effort to stay warm.

Admittedly, you felt embarrassed about your question, and a little enraged you were asking at all. The Mayor’s words had struck something in you, and you hadn’t slept for most of the night. Instead, you’d chainsmoked and continuously ate Mentats and the rest of the Blamco you had in your fridge. You’d paced, alternating between anger and a scared thoughtfulness before finally passing out on your couch just as dawn was approaching, hugging the warm pot that had held your mac'n'cheese.

For what little you got of it, you had not slept well.

“The ocean?” Daisy snorts, and you suck hard on your cigarette. “Of course I’ve seen the ocean. I grew up in this city. Hard not to see the ocean.” She laughs again, and you twist your head away, chewing down hard on the filter in your mouth. It’s gone quickly, and you aggressively stub the cherry out before you light up another one with rapidly cooling fingers.

“I’m guessing you’re asking because you haven’t seen the ocean?” You timidly glance towards her--she’s smiling mildly--and the look you share is quick before you’re back to examining the yellow curtain. “I’m actually surprised. That’s hard to do here, or anywhere really on the East Coast.” No one called this side of the Wastes _the East Coast_ anymore. Only the oldest ghouls ever do.

“I’ve seen the ocean, ok?” You spit, hand gesturing out in your frustration. Your leg is bouncing rapidly on your stool, and you’re struggling to light your cigarette. When it’s finally burning you put your lighter down a little harder than necessary. “I just...haven’t been.”

Your boss grunts, taking your attitude in stride. “Well, let me tell you that it’s nothing like it used to be. At least not around here, so I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.” You pick at some kind of sticky residue left on the metal countertop before your finger goes numb and you shove your hand back in your pocket. “Go north or south and you’ll find some calmer areas that aren’t infested with Mirelurks. Outside of the cities there’s the least amount of garbage, human or otherwise.”

Her tone makes you uncomfortable. There’s a growing anger to her melancholic descriptions, a bitterness that transcends time in a way you’ll never understand. It makes you acutely aware of her physical state, and you can’t help glancing at her. Over her destroyed face and hands hidden poorly behind well-kept wigs and clean, pressed suits. It makes you think about Hancock and what he’s experienced in his lifetime as a ghoul, too. You don’t know anything about his past, or really anything about him at all, except for the fact that he seems to like to worm his way into business that doesn’t involve him.

Her chair scrapes across the floor, and you blink from your daze, watching her rise and sling her heavier jacket around her shoulders.

“I’m taking the rest of the day. It’s too damn cold,” she grumbles, setting her wide brim hat atop her head. “Close up when you can’t stand the cold anymore.”

She sweeps past you. You know she’s headed for the Memory Den. You feel guilty for bringing up past memories, but you continue to think about the ocean and why it means anything to you at all, even as you close up five minutes later.

You stare at the Old State House while you stroll around the corner. You think about your encounter from a few nights ago again, and huff into your hands. You hate that Hancock shattered your perception about your own reality so easily, even if you knew that your fear of the outside was well founded. In spite of that, you were still feeling claustrophobic in many ways with the monotony of your life as it is now.

You thought about the freedom you’d had in Little Lamplight. It had been easier then, being a child pretending to be an adult in a world that doesn’t care about the difference between the two. Having to survive and kill at a young age hadn’t been easier, but there was still an innocence that hadn’t been permeated by the difficulties of what came as you matured. The older you got the more you had to protect the younger ones as the people who had protected you left or died. Your actions began to weigh on you, and on others who were your age, too.

And then suddenly there weren’t any younglings left to protect.

The choice to go to New Vegas hadn’t necessarily been due to a need, but a loss. Little Lamplight was no longer just children trying to outlive the Wastes. It had begun to feel more and more like a group of Raiders the older you got and the fewer children there were among you. It was something you all had sworn you’d never be and what ultimately tore the group apart.

You left, and while RJ had remained in the Capital Wasteland, you had gone West. It hadn’t been as tumultuous as you had thought, only tiring and emotionally taxing, and you had been happy to finally arrive in Nevada and settle down near New Vegas. Things were bad out there, but not nearly as destroyed as the ruined cities here. The dangerous places were more obvious and easier to avoid if you knew where you were going, but the rising threat of war brought out the worst in people. It was mangeable until the Legion invaded. And then you left, resulting in your becoming the very thing you never wanted to be in the first place, just so you could get out of the Mojave before things really boiled over.

“Fuck Caesar and his dumbass Legion,” you mutter under your breath, flipping the collar of your jacket up and around your jaw, hugging it close.

Very rarely are you ever out of work this early in the day, and if you are it’s usually due to you having the day off. When that happens, you tend to hole yourself up in your apartment. Now, you’re getting to see the few people that wander through Goodneighbor when the sun is up. Even though its cold and dreary, you hadn’t been outside with the sun since your last scavenging hunt, and a restlessness has settled into your bones. You twist to the left as you approach your apartment’s door, walking away from it, past the entrance to the Third Rail and into the small square between the Old State House and Hotel Rexford.

You plop down on a cold iron bench, and lean your head back towards the cloudy sky. Framing it are the ruined skyscrapers and buildings of what was once downtown Boston. The air feels fresh and cool in your lungs as the breeze blows through the ruined city, taking with it the smell of rot and death. You try to let it take your memories of New Vegas, the idiotic choice to go there at all, and everything between now and then away, too.

Even though it had been three years since you’d returned from the West, you would never forget your first winter after that. The coolness that had come after the searing desert temperatures was a blessing you had never appreciated before you had left. The desert winters felt mild compared to this. Weather this far east was mostly cool or cold, and usually wet, and you had never loved it more, even when you were shivering and nearly frostbitten while huddling in abandoned wreckage with other Psyched out Raiders.

“Hey.”

You jump, eyes opening wide. When you lift your head you see Nate standing, crutch-free, grinning down at you. He’s layered similarly, the sleeves of his vault suit sticking out from beneath his jacket.

“Hey,” you say back, scooting over slightly, relinquishing part of the warm spot you’d made so he could sit. “Nice leg. Is it new?”

He laughs, and pats his left leg. “Pretty much. It doesn’t actually feel like I got mauled by a mutant dog anymore.”

You share a smile, and Nate turns to face you on the bench. Some part of you knows exactly what he’s here to talk about, given how fresh the wounds are that Hancock had opened the other evening. It makes anger that in no way should be directed at the Vaultie crawl up your throat and sour your mouth.

“So,” he starts, giving you a searching look. “I’ve been cleared to leave in the next couple of days. I wanted to ask if you’d thought some more on my offer?”

You slouch down in your seat, frowning at the metal hovels that people had made along the Goodneighbor barrier wall between the Old State House and Hotel Rexford. You could see a few people making food, little shadows shivering on the insides of what they called their homes. It sucked that they had to brave the cold in that condition. You’d been lucky that your raiding days had afforded you a decent amount of caps before you started working for Daisy.

“Uh, yeah. About that,” you mutter darkly. “Mayor Hancock stopped by my place last night.” You pinch your lips bitterly. “Had _a lot_ to say about it for some reason?”

When you glance at Nate, his face is slack in surprise, eyes slightly wide. “He did what?”

“I’m assuming you didn’t know?” You laugh dryly when he shook his head. “He came to my home to return something of mine, ranted at me for ten minutes about how I should be living my life, and then left.” Your head is shaking back and forth in disbelief and you can’t stop. “I have no fucking idea where it came from or _who he thinks he is--_ ”

“Oh my god,” Nate grumbles into his hand, brows furrowing heavily.

The more you think about it, the crazier it seems. His investment in your life choices made zero sense. The more you thought about it, the more worked up you got.

Nate seemed to be able to tell. “Hey, listen, I’m so sorry if he said anything inappropriate.” You huff and turn away. “We got pretty wasted last night, and it could have been that he just...got a little too cocky. I’m not making excuses or anything, it still sounds like he acted really out of line.”

You keep your eyes trained on Hotel Rexford. They drag across the square and over towards the Old Town House, the dwelling of your current ire. Some old part of you wants to kick the door in and pull the mayor out just to give him an earful and embarrass him in some fashion the way he embarrassed you in your own home.

“I can’t take away whatever John said to you.” You’re surprised when Nate keeps talking, turning to look into his dark and apologetic gaze. “But I hope that hasn’t colored whatever decision you were going to make in regards to joining us. I would really appreciate you coming with us. I also understand if his comments have made you feel too uncomfortable to join us.”

You grimace and sigh, unwilling to look at Nate. All through your thoughts and anger and pacing from last night had led to a number of realizations. Some of which Hancock had been right about. You did think your fear was well-founded, but people traveled through the Wastes just fine all the time. There were a lot of places that you had not been to because of your fear, a lot of things you didn’t let yourself do if you continued to let it fuel your lifestyle. But was it really so unreasonable of you to restrict yourself from seeing those places for self-preservation? You hadn’t done much travelling since returning from the Raider lifestyle, and that had been just as sedentary with bouts of extreme violence thrown in the mix.

As it stands now, you were barely meeting people. Despite spending so much time together, you and Daisy didn’t talk much. The only reason that you had spoken much with Nate at all was because _he_ was the chatty one. You only sought RJ out because you had known him for so long, and even then he initiated most contact. Even though he’d royally pissed you off, you’d never even entertained the idea that you and Hancock would have a conversation because of how anxious your attraction to him made you, leaving you feeling lonely and sorry for yourself.

Scrubbing your hand through your hair, you sigh raggedly and say, “Look, just...give me another few days. I know it’s inconvenient, but--” You already feel like you know the answer, you just aren't brave enough to say it under Nate's kind gaze.

“Not at all!” Nate’s hand squeezes your shoulder before releasing it. You take a deep breath, as if Nate had pulled a weight off your soul, too. “Besides, we’ll be back in Goodneighbor at some point. You’ll always have an invite. Maybe by then Hancock won’t be such an asshole and give you an apology.” Nate smiles, shrugging his shoulders, and you find it impossible not to smile back.

Just before you part ways, you see the door to the Old State House open behind the Vaultie. Out trudges the red-coated mayor and the scarred Fahrenheit. His eyes are hidden by his hat, and he seems to be trying to light a cigarette. You don’t realize you’re staring until he gets a nudge from Fahrenheit, her head jerking your way, and his head pops upwards like a triggered jack-in-the-box.

Your heart jumps to your throat, and you can feel blood rushing to your face in both anger and embarrassment.

“See ya,” you mutter, slapping Nate on the bicep before standing and stalking around him. You don’t look back at the mayor as you stride towards your apartment building.

The night is once again filled with chain smoking, though this is a more contemplative kind. You stroll the length of your apartment, wondering how you can make Hancock absolutely miserable for a few days. You don’t want to go overboard, obviously. Some pining part of you is still hoping that something will come of this non-existent thing between the two of you, even after everything he said to you. In this moment you hate how much you pine for him.

The next day before work, you drag your old gear out of the bottom drawers of your dresser, laying it out before you on your bed for a curious examination.

The old leather connecting the sparse metal pieces that protected your most vital parts hadn’t been oiled in a long time. Seeing as you never thought you’d be wandering far from Goodneighbor once you settled down here, you try not to beat yourself up for it. Instead, you meticulously decide which parts need to be replaced and which parts might be revivable.

Your weapons hadn’t deteriorated much. Your pistol only needed some oiling and cleaning, and your assault rifle--stolen off a man you had murdered specifically for his gun--was almost pristine. Your combat knife, a gift from your father many, many years ago, only required minor sharpening. All of the holsters, however, were not in any condition to carry these weapons anymore.

Daisy glances up at you when you open the grating and begin pushing it open. “I’m going to need you to go on another run next week.”

You falter as you're lashing the grating to the wall it’s attached to. Your heart stopped in your chest. You’d barely thought about what it could mean for your job if you agreed to go with Nate and Hancock.

She says your name, frowning at you from her place at the counter where she’s doing morning inventory. “Did you hear me?”

“Ah, yeah. Of course.” Your voice is sheepish, and you wince, slowly turning on your heel to look at her. She’s giving you an unimpressed glare, one brow raised and her lips pressed tight. You clear your throat and stand straighter. “Nate...asked me if I wanted to go with him.”

“To do what?” Her voice is like a hot knife, slicing through your resolve with ease.

“Uh.” What exactly did Nate and Hancock do on their adventures? You hadn’t actually asked, and they hadn’t been very forthright with the reason for their galavanting.

“You don’t even know what you agreed to?” She scoffs, slapping her clipboard down on the countertop. You wince, watching her lean forward heavily on the counter, eyes heated.

“Daisy, I didn’t agree--” She’s having none of what you wanted to say.

“What happened to staying here in Goodneighbor? Where it’s safe!” She glared out at the wall behind you that kept Goodneighbor separated from the rest of the world, waving a hand at it. “The things out there won’t hurt you here! You know that! That’s exactly why you came here in the first place!”

Daisy had never specifically expressed worry for your well-being before. Sure, she would give you breaks after your runs outside Goodneighbor, and would make sure you ate regularly, but beyond that you had never thought you had shared any kind of bond beyond employer and employee. You’d thought she was only protecting an investment, and maybe that was a driving point for some of her anger.

You take a deep breath, frowning at your boss. She frowned right back. “Daisy, this…isn’t a big deal.” It really wasn’t. Right? Her level of distraught reminded you of your own built up fear that you had allowed to fester inside of you, and it was like looking in a mirror. "I-I didn't agree to anything."

She scoffed, and began aggressively digging around her pockets for her cigarettes. “Not a big deal? I thought you were one of the only sane people in this goddamn hellhole! If you go out there, you’ll be bombarded by raiders, by ferals, by mutants, by God only knows what else! You won’t fucking come back!”

Stunned, you simply stare at her. Her fear, manifesting as rage, was bringing back your own anxieties that had been dampened by your anger towards Hancock. Your heart rate jumped up, you could feel it pounding against your chest, and you suddenly felt lightheaded and sweaty. You lean back against the jutting, compressed grate behind you, feeling the cold metal dig into your back.

There really was so much you didn’t know about the outside world. You were both scared and curious about it. Some logical part of your brain was drawing interesting parallels between the familiarity of Daisy’s fear and Hancock’s riling encouragement, and where you fell between the two. You tried to harness that logic but Daisy was talking again, and her rasping tone was urgent and demanding, sending your heart into another accelerated panic.

“Besides, you’re just going to leave your job?! Who will replace you? Did you think of that when you _mindlessly_ agreed to go along with that pink-skinned Vaultie? Huh?” She turns sharply, stalking towards the back of the store, disappearing behind the small drape that hid it away, and you’re left alone. You can still hear her ruined vocal chords grinding with her angry mutterings. You raise your gaze to glance out towards the small courtyard, and are mildly horrified when you meet someone’s eye. A member of the Watch, eyeing you with a deep frown from where he’s standing stiffly by the entrance.

That, accompanied by a loud and surprising sound of something falling, metallic contents ringing against the concrete as they scattered, jolts you from your haze.

Before Daisy can return, you leave. Back out into the cool air, you ignore the Watch’s eyes as you run from Daisy and your job. Just like you ran from Little Lamplight, and from DC, and from New Vegas. This time, though, you were feeling a little more pissed off than you had before, and that seemed to be a running theme now that people were questioning your ability to make decisions for yourself, trying to influence you when you knew you were so delicate to manipulation in the first place.

You needed to get somewhere you could calm down without feeling stifled. You thought about your box of stims upstairs, but for some reason your home didn’t feel appealing. Instead, you made a hard left, and then again as you entered the Third Rail. Ham glanced up from his seat by the door, brow rising as you hammered down the stairs, barely acknowledging his greeting.

Your eyes were solely on Charlie as you shouldered past a group of working men who were taking a break for the day, ignoring one of them when he cursed at you on their way out.

“Charlie,” you nearly barked, and ache in your chest as it slammed against the bar. “You got any Jet?” Just asking had your gut twisting, remembering stressful nights in your traveling Raider caravan, alone but never _actually_ alone, the others around you feeling like a constant threat while you were getting dangerously high, so much so that the Jet started making you hallucinate.

You barely paid attention to the number of caps you tossed on the bar, ignoring Charlie’s grumbles about your rude behaviour, snagging the Jet from the bartender’s spindly grip and sucking it down desperately. A hand suddenly pressed against your back, and you glanced up at RJ, who had appeared from nowhere and was frowning down at you with worry in his eyes.

As the sharp calmness fell over you, the synapses in your brain connected the missing emotional pieces to your panicked mind. That flashback--huddled up in a hidden place, away from the other Raiders who you had never gotten along with while struggling through your high-- reminded you of feeling like a dog that never meshed with the pack. The lone wolf who wandered and could never settle down, no matter how much you wanted that once familiar comfort.

You took another deep huff, and RJ grimaced, reaching up to pry the Jet from your hands and out from between your teeth. “Hey, c’mon, easy… Take it easy.”

“God, RJ,” you gasped, bracing your hands on the bar and leaning your forehead against the cool metal.

“What’s wrong?” His hand is tight and warm on the back of your neck. Grounding. The Jet is setting in, and your eyes blink blearily at the fuzzy bartop. You taste the chemical layer on your buzzing teeth left behind from the inhalant when you run your tongue across them. “Aren’t you supposed to be working right now?”

You lift your head and sniff, eyeing the younger man. He eyes you right back, gaze flicking over your cheeks, from one eye to the other. He leans back a little, head tilted as he examines you hard.

“Is it dangerous?” RJ raises an eyebrow, gaze hopping back to yours. He’s obviously confused, and it takes you a second to connect your brain to your mouth again as the Jet high continues to bloom. “Outside. The walls. Is it dangerous?”

If anyone would tell you straight, it’s RJ. He’s always been like that; honest. Sure, he was younger than you by a couple of years, but he had been alone longer by the time you ended up in Little Lamplight. Wiser than most for a scrawny 10 year old kid.

He looks bemused but answers you. His shoulder bobs. “You should know that.” When you give him a withering glare, he sighs and looks away with another, more timid shrug. “Sometimes, I guess?” You stare at each other, and he seems to realize you want him to elaborate. He sighs again, and let’s his gaze flick over the bar, head twisting slightly to glance over his shoulder. You follow his gaze, but he’s shifting to stand before you, guiding you to one of the many couches in the bar.

“The only thing I really get scared of are the Mutants and the Synths,” he says, helping you sit and taking a seat beside you. He pulls his hat off and scrubs his hand through his short hair. “That and not coming home to Duncan. Or...losing him again.” He looks uncomfortable, but like he’s trying, and you appreciate it deeply. He turns his gaze down at you, grimacing. “This about Hancock and whatever dumb shit he said to you?”

From your slouched place on the couch you groan and laugh, an odd mixture of emotions. You rub your hands over your face and wipe at your damp eyes. “Part of it. Did Nate tell you?”

“More like the whole bar. Really laid into Hancock about it last night. Your name came up a few times. Was easy to put the pieces together.” The couch bounces as RJ leans back next to you, stretching his long legs out past yours. “Hancock looked real meek if you ask me.”

“Good,” you grumble, digging your face between his shoulder and the back of the couch. He makes an irate sound but doesn’t stop you. “He deserves it.”

You both fall silent. You allow yourself to find comfort in the darkness behind your eyes and MacCready’s back while also listening to the quiet din of the bar around you. Dim shapes and colors blur behind your eyelids, and you stretch your fingertips out into the depth of blackness where they reside in your lap.

“Why you askin’ about outside? Like you’ve forgotten what it’s like?” RJ’s voice is quiet, perturbed in a way that harkens the small boy he used to be when you both lived further south.

You reach up and grip his bicep with a weak hand. It rests comfortably in the crook of his elbow and his larger, warmer one covers it. You don’t immediately answer, rubbing your forehead against the rough fabric of his shirt as your heart slows under the weight of the Jet in your blood. You feel lightheaded, and your eyelids flutter.

“There's so much I wanna forget, RJ.” You shut your eyes and try not to see your sins. “I don't want to remember what it's like outside the walls. What I've done."

He was silent for a while, and soon you finally feel like you can breathe again.

“In this world, it's rare for someone to live a life without violence.” The hand of the arm you're gripping tight rests on your thigh, the only place he can really reach without pulling away from you. “No decent person holds the things you've done--the things you've had to do--against you. I wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t done some bad things back in the day. But pretending it didn't happen...that ain't healthy.”

You don't know what to say, so you don't try to say anything. RJ's hands remain relaxed where they sit, comforting and familiar weights in the face of your panic-driven intoxication.

"You still on the fence about going with Nate and Hancock?"

You inhale deeply at his question, Daisy's twisted features, Nate’s earnestness, and Hancock’s words coming to the forefront of your mind.

"Yes," you whisper, sitting up and rubbing a hand across your face. It feels slack and numb. You wish you hadn't gotten high. You glance up into RJ's shadowed gaze. "Why?"

RJ raises a brow and shrugs lightly, averting his gaze. "I dunno if you want my opinion on it…"

You nudge him. " _What_ , RJ?"

He nudges you back. "I think you should go. Maybe not this time, but in the future. It would be good for you. I know it's scary, but I've traveled with both of ‘em before and they're smart, safe people to be with. They’ll take care of you."

You gnaw your bottom lip, staring at the side of his face. The question that keeps popping up in your mind that you realized MacCready would be the best person to ask bubbles at your lips. At your slow inhale, he tilts his head to side eye you.

"You trust them with your life?" You ask.

That’s really the biggest question, isn’t it?

RJ nods once. "I do."

\--

Come the end of the week, you avoid Nate and Hancock both to the best of your ability. You silently slink to and from work, the excruciating silence from Daisy pummeling your back for the entirety of your shift until she leaves for the Memory Den or retires upstairs for the evening. She’s barely said a word to you since you tried to announce your possible--not even concrete--plans to leave, and when she has spoken it’s been sharp, almost all one-word orders.

You almost escape out the front gate for your scavenging trip the same day that Hancock and Nate are set to leave without saying a word to either of them. Unfortunately for you, a certain ghoul in a red trench coat is slouching by this side of the Old State House, pausing in the process of lighting a cigarette when you freeze at the sight of him.

Hancock fumbles for a second with his lighter, holding eye contact with you all the while. You half turn away, debating whether you should make up an excuse to go back to your apartment for ten minutes, but he’s already pushing off the wall, shoving his hand into his pocket and his cigarette into one of the folds of his hat.

“Uh.”

Fuck Hancock and his sexy, raspy voice, and his entitled attitude, and his fucking obsidian puppy dog eyes.

“I’m sorry, for, uh...” he begins, though his kicked puppy look forms into one of confusion as you stalk around him. “...What the fuck? Hey--”

“No.” You call over your shoulder, shaking fists clenched at your sides. Your heart is pounding and your legs feel like jell-o, but you’re also kind of fucking pissed off just by looking at him.

“No?” Hancock loudly repeats, his boots crunching along the gravel and rust behind you as you slip out the gate and onto the destroyed Boston streets. You resist the urge to take off sprinting. “What the fuck do you mean no?”

He has the gall to sound offended and disbelieving. You whip around and glare at him, and the ghoul is glaring right back while trailing after you. Over his shoulder, a member of the Watch looks on curiously, unmoving from her seat on the bar stool next to the Goodneighbor entrance.

“Just--” You flounder and then throw up your hands. “N-No!”

“You can’t just tell me _no_ and not explain yourself,” he tells you exasperatedly, ruined fingers digging around in his hat folds for his hidden cigarette.

You point a finger at him and step closer aggressively. “If you can fucking come to my doorstep and try to tell me how to live my life uninvited, then I can tell you no without an explanation!”

The mayor comes to a teetering halt against your finger and shrinks into his coat. His unlit cigarette twitches up and down restlessly between his lips, his eyes looking you over apprehensively.

“I was _trying_ to apologize for that,” he stresses, holding his hands out. As if it’ll help calm you down.

Some part of your heart tells you to feel bad for snapping at him, for interrupting him, but a part of you that hasn’t seen real daylight in two years rears its head. It flushes you with adrenaline and pushes you to step into Hancock’s personal space.

“Maybe I don’t want it,” you whisper, your inflammatory comment making Hancock’s non-existent brows rise. His face slackens with surprise, looking you up and down. Removing his cigarette from his mouth, he opens it as if to speak, and falters.

You take his hesitancy as an opportunity. With a deep, rough inhale through your nose, you step away from him. He watches you, glancing you up and down with a flick of his eyelids, and says nothing more as you turn on your heel and stalk into the groaning city, autumn winds whipping your hair around your face and stinging your cheeks.

You get decently far away from Goodneighbor before you realize you’ve been wandering while deeply engrossed in your angry thoughts, without any real care for your own safety. It brings you to a screeching stop, your heart throbbing in your chest for other reasons beyond anger. The way it beats feels like knives under your ribs, and you quickly shuffle yourself up through the blown off doors of some dark brick building and put your back to the wall, hiding yourself away from the outside world as best as you can.

Your hands are shaking, and you sink down into a squat, resisting the urge to bury your face into your knees when you hug them. You keep your eyes wide open, staring at nothing, but hyper aware of any movement in your peripheral vision.

You haven’t been that angry in a long time. Daisy’s anger had scared and shamed you. Even when Hancock had berated you on your own doorstep, you’d been more shocked than mad. But it was like he didn’t know when to quit. Like a dog with a bone, he wanted you to forgive him and make it easier for him. Maybe he expected you to, because that’s how most people treated him. Allowed him to get away with saying things without consequence, or _expected_ it of him.

You sniff, and the sudden realization your eyes are burning brings your hands up to wipe away unshed tears quickly. You almost slap yourself in the face. You’re a fucking mess. There’s no way you can go out today. You have to postpone, at least until tomorrow. The thought of bringing nothing back to Daisy after pissing her off so badly before was dreadful.

“Shit,” you hiss, tugging at your hair in large fistfuls, keeping yourself from dropping your guard by allowing your head to bow under the weight of your emotions. It’s an absolute miracle you didn’t get ambushed while you blindly walked into the metal deathtrap of a maze that was once downtown Boston.

It takes a long time for you to work up the courage to move. In that time, gunfire picks up somewhere in the distance, gluing you to your spot for what feels like hours until the echoing pops stop with a sudden thundering explosion. A breeze picks up, wafting the smell of gunpowder to your nose. It puts you on high alert, and you grip your gun tightly, safety flicked off and the end pointed down at the ground between your legs. You strain to listen for anything, anything that confirms you aren’t safe because you don’t feel safe, barely blinking, limbs stiff with hypervigilance. Like an engine struggling to turn over, your brain almost seems to skip like a messed up video into the sudden realization that you’ve been crouched and hearing nothing but the wind, that your knees and feet ache, but something could be out there, but if you wait too long something could find you instead, and it sends you spiraling again.

It’s a damning cycle, it feels like you have to climb your way out of your own head, and when you finally do get out of that hole inside of you that sinks all the way to your gut, you almost sprint back to Goodneighbor with tears threatening to fall down your cheeks and gripping your pistol so hard you’re scared it might break. Illogically, you fear the path back to safety has somehow changed, or will be unrecognizable at every turn, and you’ll be lost to the rust and the blood of the towering metal mountains that harbor so many things that want to kill you.

It’s a relief when the gate comes into view around a corner of concrete and rebar debris. The mayor is no longer outside the gate, but the same guard is, and she gives you a concerned look as you speed past her and through the metal doors of the fence.

Daisy gives you a double take when you come into view, her scarred brow furrowing even more. She stands straight from off the counter, and asks, “You alright? What the fuck happened out there?”

“I just...I got spooked,” you choke out, whipping your cloth bag over your head and slapping it down on the counter between you and her. “I can’t do it today, Daisy. I’m sorry.”

You share a long stare with her, and she snorts, face falling into a stony and hurtful impassivity. She snatches the satchel off the metal countertop and turns her back on you in silence. You can feel the sob bubbling up in your chest, and it takes everything in your power not to reach out to your boss for emotional support you desperately need.

Instead, you leave. Empty handed of both caps and, it feels, your dignity. On wobbly legs you stride quickly back to your apartment building with every intention of hiding yourself away from everyone.

When you're standing alone in your silent apartment is when you realize you're still gripping your gun in your hand. You glance down at it as tears begin to fall, hiccuping while fiddling to unload and dislodge the magazine, turning on the safety and tossing all the parts onto your small coffee table.

You sink into a crouch, moaning into your hands as tears wet your skin. "Ugh. G-God, you idiot," you cry, gritting your teeth and trying to hold back your sobs. You were desperately attempting to reel yourself in, to calm down. To the best of your ability, you took deep breaths. They started shaky and stuttery, before evening out. Your head rushes, and you lean against the musty cushions of your couch, sitting yourself heavily against it.

The calm after the storm. You wipe your face and sniff heavily, staring up at a corner of your living room without really seeing it. You try to remind yourself that this isn’t the first time you’ve had a panic response outside the walls that kept you from doing your job, but it is the first time it’s happened after such a large disagreement with your boss. The only disagreement you’ve ever had with your boss.

You grimace, pressing your face into your couch. Your body feels exhausted, and your brain feels a little numb, but overall you do feel better. A little embarrassed, but relaxed. It takes a little while, but you eventually rise and wash your face, changing your clothes and stuffing your feet back into your shoes. With your brain a little less foggy, you’ve come to the decision that being alone right now isn’t what you need.

The air is cold and slightly humid in the hallway, but you take your book and walk yourself up two more flights of stairs to knock on the second door down the hall.

You smile down at Duncan when he opens the door, and he grins widely. “Hi,” he whispers shyly, leaning into the door.

“Can I come in?” You ask softly, and he nods, stepping back and opening the door wider.

MacCready sits on an armchair in the corner, chin in hand, and looks up at you with tired eyes. On the coffee table is a puzzle in the process of being pieced together.

RJ says nothing about you showing up in the middle of the day when you should be working with red eyes. When you move to sit on the couch adjacent to him, you accept a room temperature beer he passes your way. Duncan slides himself to his knees on the floor, beginning to explain exactly what the puzzle was.

“We don’t have all the pieces. Dad and I have done this one before, so we know that,” he admits. He pauses to couch into his elbow. “But, none of the middle ones are missing, so you can still see what it is!”

“Who needs all the pieces anyway,” you joke, leaning forward to peer down at the messy spread.

Duncan giggles, and RJ holds out his bottle to lightly clink it against yours.

“Cheers to that,” he mutters, downing what’s left of his in one long sip.

\--

Hancock trudges alongside Nate. A light rain patters around them, the acidic nature of it feeling like heaven on the ghoul’s rough skin. He’s diggin’ it so much he’s even tucked his hat under his arm, letting the water drench him from head to toe.

The Vaultie doesn’t like it nearly as much. With a cowl over his full head of hair, Nate keeps his head down as he stomps through the rubble and mud of the old Financial District.

“I dunno how we’re supposed to find some vault hidden away in this mess of a city,” Nate gripes. “By the time we find this detective, he could be fucking dead!”

The visit to Diamond City hadn’t been as fruitful as he’d hoped, and the chaotic and wet radioactive air around them wasn’t helping the soldier’s mood one bit.

“Maybe that old Vault-Tec ghoul knows where it is,” Hancock suggests. From half a pace behind, he watches the tension in Nate’s shoulders lessen some. The man’s gloved hands uncurl from where they’d been fisted at his sides.

Hancock sighs in mild relief, glancing up towards the glowing Goodneighbor sign as they approach, the light reflecting off the growing puddles around the wall. It’s only been a few days since they were gone, but it feels good to be back. The sun is setting, and quickly, and he’d much rather have Nate get some sleep than be up all night trying to string together shitty leads and raring to go after a small Psycho injection, something the time traveling vaultie has been dabbling more and more in as of late.

That level of focused mania was too dangerous, even for an experienced druggie like Hancock.

Nodding to the member of the Watch seated by the gate’s entrance, the hinges squeal as it swings open. Nate stalks inside without glancing back at Hancock, whose stopped to glance tentatively towards Daisy’s.

He meets your eyes through the light rain, and watches you lower your head quickly, reaching out to fiddle with a cigarette and prop your chin in your hand. Looking anywhere but him. Grimacing, he turns and takes himself into his home, shutting the door a little harder than necessary.

The Mayor stands dripping in the silence of the Old State House. He can hear people talking softly somewhere in the house, just under the creak of the old wood as the wind blows through it. It takes a second for him to calm himself enough to tug his frock off and head upstairs. He needs a second alone; away from an angry Vaultie, the guilt of his previous interactions with you, the expectations of everyone else. He steers away from his office to his bedroom instead, nearly sighing in delight at the sight of his bed.

Tossing the drenched frock, hat and pants onto the mannequin in the corner, the ghoul strips down entirely and flops down onto the musty sheets. They’re blessedly cool compared to the charged energy in the air, and he wiggles himself down onto them, spreading himself out and completely exposed to the privacy of his room.

The roughest part about this latest trip with Nate was the waiting. He did a lot of waiting outside the Diamond City walls when they went around there. It was irritating, not being able to step foot into his childhood home given who he was now. Nate knew he used to live there, just not the specifics, so it was easy for him to give the guy directions. The downside was he’s at risk standing alone outside the walls with a bunch of bigoted Diamond City guards staring him down. He doubted they would help him out even if a raider came up on him right in front of them, on the city steps.

He dozes off to the sound of the rain for a little while, but never really falls asleep. The radstorm has gotten under his skin, making him feel antsy after a little while. It doesn’t take long for him to get up and start pacing, huffing on a Jet inhaler.

He opens the doors to his balcony, the cool, damp air rushing over him and feeling like a midday breeze. He leans against the moulding of the door, uncaring of his nudity, and looks down upon Goodneighbor as he lights up a smoke.

Not many people are out. The ghouls take watch outside during radstorms, and he can hear some of them chatting and laughing together somewhere below him, feeling the same rush of energy he’s getting from the blown in radiation. It makes him smile, makes him remember why he’s here at all. To give good people a place they can exist without being scared or hurt.

A light flicks on in his periphery, and he glances to his right. He does a double take, pausing in bringing his cigarette to his lips when he sees you standing in your small living room, back to the window. You’re tugging your leather jacket off, hanging it up by your door, and then your shirt as you walk out of sight.

Hancock leans forward, nearly into the rain, when another dim light turns on in your bedroom. Shit. He didn’t know he could see into your apartment from here. He sucks hard on his cigarette, eyes roaming over the naked curve of your waist, the white of your bra. Your hair falls from the bun you’d had it in, curling around your shoulders. He puffs out a smokey breath as you peel your pants down your legs, leaning forward, pressing a hand into the end of your bed. His eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but even slightly out of focus, you look stunning leaning over the end of the bed with your hair falling over one shoulder in nothing but your skivvies, hand digging into your mussed sheets.

Your head turns towards the window, and he almost inhales his cigarette in surprise. He quickly steps back, even though you probably can’t see him through the rain and the dark, hiding himself in his rooms as he coughs.

“F-Fuck,” he hacks, pinching out the end of his cigarette and leaning heavily into the open door frame. The radiation isn’t doing anything for the arousal his small peek at your body has done to him. He glances down, cock half hard and curving slightly into his right thigh, like it knows he wants to look again.

“I shouldn’t be lookin’ at all,” he grumbles, smoothing a hand over his head as he breathes hard, flicking his cigarette onto a small table by his mannequin.

He stares out over the wet courtyard.

John Hancock has always had poor impulse control.

There’s a sting of guilt as he leans back out and to the right. He doesn’t immediately see you. You’re gone for a while, and he’s ashamed to say how long he stands there, waiting. So long that he almost goes back inside to take care of his little problem alone when you suddenly reappear.

A soft, raspy groan is lost to the radioactive winds as you crawl into your bed completely nude, the soft glow of the lamp on your bedside table making you look ethereal as you spread yourself across the sheets, rolling over, hair falling over the edge of the bed.

Radstorms make most people feel warm and on edge, though it tends to make non-ghouls a little more volatile. John remembers sweating through them when he was a human, grumbling more and a little more aggressive than normal, doing more drugs and trying to work out the decaying thrum that seems to vibrate from person to person when these storms roll through.

It doesn’t seem to affect you any differently. You lie flat, belly and breasts raised towards the ceiling as you adjust yourself comfortably, fanning a hand across your face. He bites his ruined lip as your other stokes mindlessly along the curve of one breast, following the rise and fall back and forth. A hard shiver he can see from here runs through your body.

John feels that familiar, lovely throb in his gut. Like you, he strokes fingers lightly along himself, down over the curve of a protruding hip bone all the way to his length, pressing one cheek into the damp wood of his doorpane. You must be so soft. He can see you now, see the parts he wonders about. Your bed is probably cool despite the ambient heat, and your skin--

He pauses, shoving off the door pane to fumble around in his frock pocket. He tugs out a small tin that had once held shoeshine and had since been emptied and cleaned. Twisting the cap off, he dips his fingers in, spreading it along his hand. Tossing the tin away onto that small table by his mannequin, John returns his eyes to you, hand pausing in his first stroke across his cock.

The sweet smell of lavender rises to his nose as he watches your other hand wander down along your stomach, stroking lightly along your hip, over your thigh. It falls open slowly, revealing the shadow of hair between your legs that you trace around to your other leg. You shift, sighing so heavily John can see the way your chest expands even from this distance. Your other hand pauses at the peak of one breast, and he knows you’re touching your nipple. He wonders how hard you like it? If you’re the sensitive type and can only take so much, or if you need it to sting a little?

He swallows, sighing shakily himself while smearing the cool lotion along his cock.

While his dick certainly didn’t get away from the damage of his ghoulification, he’s still got all of it, which is more than a lot of ghouls can say for themselves. And it still works like a charm. Not that there aren’t days where he struggles to maintain himself, whether its due to the state of his body, because he’s inebriated, or just from the fact he’s almost forty. But he knows he’s lucky, and he wants to show you just how lucky he is.

Your fingers dip down to that lovely space between your thighs, your head dipping back into your mattress, the hand stroking your breast encasing it as much as you can in your own grip.

John’s heart races, and he winces. His head thunks against the door pane, hand slowing on his cock. He wants it, he wants you, he wants to watch you so fucking bad… “Fuck,” he hisses, pushing himself away from the doorway with his other arm. He squeezes and tugs at his dick, closing his eyes. “Fuck, John, what the fuck are you doing?” His head smacks against the door again, accompanied by a groan that was much less lustrous and much more annoyed.

He lifts his head, taking one last long look at you. Watching your legs shift wider with a roll of your hips, your groping hands, mouth dropping open.

John shoves himself away from the door, stalking back into his room. He collapses back onto his bed, glaring up at the ceiling without really seeing it. The vision of your body and your pleasure is seared into his darkened eyes, and his hand works himself aggressively, trying to block out his guilt, to ignore the need to go back to his balcony to watch the way you come. His feet plant themselves on the edge of his creaky bed frame, and he lifts his other hand to his head as his hips thrust up into his hips.

He pants and thinks about making his way to your room, crawling into bed with you. He imagines you looking up at him with eyes blown full with desire as he kisses over your hips, trails his tongue along one of your breasts you had been touching so gently, growling into the pilowy flesh with a bite. What he wouldn’t fuckin’ give to make you giggle before he makes you moan.

He imagines following the same path your fingers made, from one thigh to the other, before parting your labia to stroke long and slow over your clit until your shoulders roll and you’re dripping all over him.

He’s never touched you, not in any significant way, but he’d worship every inch of you. Every fucking inch you’d give him he’d worship if he had the chance.

Your name leaves his lips in a rough, hoarse murmur.

Senses in overdrive, another burst of the heady, floral scent of your lotion hits him, and he drops his head back from where he’d been staring blearily at his dick. Your whole fucking bed must smell like your lotion, and it makes his toes curl and his body arch at the thought.

He can almost fucking feel it; you, sliding your body across his like a charged and blessed breeze rolling in from the radstorm, curling over him and stroking over his cock from root to tip with your scent fucking up his brain has him coming hard across the scarred divots of his flexing abdomen. He groans, your name and praises falling shamelessly from his lips as he slicks his hand slowly--slower--across his throbbing cock with wet, tense grips. His thighs clench as his orgasm rolls within him, easing its way up and out with each rush of come, making him hiss as he wrings the last drop from his tip and onto his body.

His body drops back to the bed with a heavy groan, and John tosses his arm over his eyes. Muscles and bones feeling loosey-goosey finally means he can fucking relax. As much as he enjoys radstorms, and appreciates their curative properties for the more vicious symptoms that come with ghoulification, there’s still little that can ease that fiery, impassioned buzzing it brings forth from within him like a good ol’ fashioned orgasm.

As he takes deep breaths, heart calming with his body, he reminds himself that this was a very different situation than just the usual rad-induced sexual mania. He bites his bottom lip, bouncing one foot as he replays your hands on your own body, your back arching, your avoiding eyes and your angry words.

Shame sweeps over him and grows with each passing second until he can’t stand to lay in the gloom and soiled bedding anymore. He sits up with a grunt, glowering down at the mess he’s made of himself. Cleaning up was even difficult, not just because of his mood, but because his skin felt too sensitive for the coarse, overwashed towel he had on hand. His shame gives way to a burning irritation that has his jaw flexing tightly.

What the fuck was he going to do? He wants to give you space, but can’t control himself enough to keep from spying on you in your moment alone? Not that you ever need to know, but the longer he revels in what he’s done the worse he feels.

“Not like you haven’t already fucked things up enough,” he growls at himself as he starts pacing, dabbing carefully at his skin. The dirtied towel lands with a slap into the porcelain tub in one corner of his room.

The balcony doors are still wide open, rain creating a loud white noise. He crosses in front of them again and again to feel that irradiated breeze. He knows that he can never tell you or anyone what just happened. If he had any hope for salvaging a possible friendship, let alone a decent working relationship with you on the off chance you do start roaming around with him and Nate, this was a secret he would need to take to his grave. No matter how many centuries down the line that may be.

He quickly shoves the thought of outliving all of his friends from his mind before he can fall too deep down _that_ rabbithole.

When he finally calms down enough, he slides on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He steps up to his balcony one more time, glancing timidly towards your home. The windows are dark now, to his relief, and with that reassurance he finagles the old balcony doors shut.

Walking barefoot through the State House, he makes his way up the winding staircase with a bottle of whiskey in hand and a couple of inhalers of Jet in a pocket. As usual during a radstorm, the attic has more people than usual sleeping up here. The same is probably the case of the Third Rail.

Part of him is already regretting his decision by the time he comes to stand in the entrance of one of the large open rooms, but he can feel that restlessness building back up again, and he’s desperate for a distraction from his most recent mistakes.

Nodding to a few people, his gaze sweeps over families and individuals. He makes eye contact with Camilla about halfway into the room. He doesn’t even have to say anything. She jumps right up from where she was sitting with another young woman on the floor, smiling widely at John and curling an arm around one of his.

“Knew you’d need some company tonight, Mr. Mayor.” Her voice is sickly sweet and teasing, all while patting over one empty pants pocket, then the others before slipping her hand inside the last and tugging one of the Jet inhalers out to take a hit right there in the middle of the sleeping quarters of the attic. Voice thick with chems, she says, “And don’t be so mean about your stuff this time! Sharing is caring, right?” She sways with her second deep inhale.

Lifting his bottle of whiskey to his lips, John takes a long pull before spinning on his heel to silently lead Camilla right back out, down to the second floor landing, and straight into his bed.

If he keeps his eyes closed, he can pretend he’s with you.


End file.
